Day 1

‘Inconvenient and Fun’

We have arrived at our new (temporary) home in Ikusaka village in Nagano, Japan. This will be our base for the next one month. It is a slightly unreal feeling to really be here after picturing it for so long. Ikusaka village is in a curve of the river Sai which winds it’s way through the mountains – we arrived along a road that threaded in and out of the gorge through tunnels cut into the rock and was often too narrow to allow two cars to pass. We had driven about 4 hours with a stop off at a lake, through some light snow (we chose a day in between heavier snow fall) and some spectacular mountainous landscapes as we entered Nagano, down from Tochigi prefecture north of Tokyo. We arrived as the shadows were getting long and by the time we had unpacked and found the nearest supermarket (about 15 minutes drive) the sky was full of a fantastic array of stars.

Our idea is to make a new life for ourselves here or hereabouts, among the mountains in Nagano. It is something we have dreamt of for years and have actively been organising and preparing for over the past several months. What we are trying to do Naoko called ‘Inconvenient and fun’ which I really love – it is something we definitely found with Kotori, also for my part with drawing and animation, that the thing which is effortful and time consuming, what we tend to avoid with fast and convenient things, it is the effort and the care and attention and the doing which is the fun of it, and that is what we want to enjoy here.