As part of the Aki Rika project street peddlars peddling cafe communication art project,  Harada san, born and raised in Tokyo, has made the arduous journey into Kamiyama’s deep jungle network (huh?).  We find him dressed in black skinny jeans with a black T-shirt, an umbrella, lots of rucksacks, and a rolling suitcase (black) walking up the road toward Shimobun past the Katayama Supermarket.  It’s drizzling.  I pull the car over and Aki Rika helps him put the suitcase in the back of the car.  I see her bash her head on the car boot.  She doesn’t see that I saw this.
Harada san is setting up a radio and an online broadcast as part of his work.  I hear that he is a bit of a techno nerd, but he seems quite normal: he wears a pair of glasses (with red frames).  Once he’s settled in a little I ask him where the radio set up is because i’d like to see it.  It’s arriving by post he says.  Perhaps tomorrow, he says.  We decided to show him Kokobun house (ここぶん) which is where the main project will take place.  I grab the old kasa and we step outside..

Later that day his boxes of geek arrive.  Watching him unpack and I see thousands of wires.

It looks like a bomb, but it’s not.  It looks handmade, and I’m sure it is.  A mic is attached to this box and it has it’s own aerial too.  It’s battery operated for 20 hours so it is handy for field recordings.  I’ll be focusing on relaxation, postive energy, dead people and abstract music.    I’m going to tell a story without words.  That’s enough about me though, back to Harada san and typhoons.

Harada san arrived at precisely the same time as a typhoon.  The typhoon brought a lot of rain.  We couldn’t leave the house for a whole day and being stuck indoors we all went a little stir-crazy.  Harada san was making groaning noises and was writing constantly on bits of paper.  It’s always a little worrying going to sleep when it’s raining heavily and the river is swelling; you can’t help wondering if you’ll wake up in a puddle but it didn’t happen.  The next day I went to see the river and it was quite shocking; the river had flooded the lower garden area (which means the river was approx. 6 metres higher than normal).  There was a lot of debris.  Our neighbour has a hatake by the side of the river and unfortunately for them, it was thoroughly smashed up by the water.  I’ll see if they want any help tidying up.

Tomorrow, lets continue Harada san’s story.  He has a sixth sense…he feels dead people… and he feels something in this house…

ToBeContinued