Phone call: It’s Gotouda and he’s barking at me in Japanese and I’m floundering around grasping for words but it all comes together and suddenly I am agreeing to something that starts tomorrow at 8am and I’ve no idea what is going to happen…

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8am
Once again, a familiar old friend is hanging around to welcome me.  His tongue dangles out of his large mouth and he’s waving hello in the breeze with his body.  He has a friend, a miniature buddy the colour of fawn with cute white spots and a leg gashed with bites.  The dogs are howlin’ and I am feeling tired already.

I help Gotouda chop some wood.  I’ve always liked chopping wood but I think my technique isn’t quite right because I tend to snap axes fairly easily.  I decided to show him another way to chop kindling – get a car tyre and put it around the wood then hack it up into little chunks.  This way you haven’t got to pick up bits to resplit them.  He seemed happy with the new method but a few minutes later I snapped the axe.  He went very quiet and said it’s ok, it’s no problem.  We fixed it fairly quickly, suprisingly so.  I was watching Gotouda’s hands as he trimmed the handle and I noticed he has strange thumbs.  The nails are small and cresent shaped and the thumb itself is stocky and rounded.  I wonder what role they’ve played in his evolution.  He had a good shirt on today too.  Green.  Also, the chopping block below is hairy, did you notice?

The boar is quartered then skinned.   Working flat on a board isn’t the easiest way to process meat like this – the dirty hair usually gets stuck to the meat on the otherside and you have to pull the skin away whilst you slice.  I imagine if the boar was hanging vertically the skin would naturally fall away from the body and you would get less contamination from the hair and dirt.  Doing it this way would probably be a one person job, so can understand why Gotouda splits it into four pieces: he likes having people to help.

The skin of the wild boar is amazing.  It is so tough and rubbery and the hair is so oily and coarse.  Gotouda burns it on the fire for a while and the hair turns to little beads of black gunk.  The stench is horrendous.  He gives this burnt skin to the dogs and they sure enjoy chewing and chewing and chewing on it.  Chewing gum for dogs.

After lunch I had a look at the house he is building for himself.  The structure looked very simple and achievable.  The roof is fabricated from large square-corrugated steel and it looks good.  Shocking how there is no insulation.  I mean couldn’t he put some rice straw between the walls, just to give it something?  Maybe it’s unnecessary.  Personally, if I was building a house here I would build this tiny little room and spend a fortune on insulation.  Then I’d stick a big wood stove in the middle and build a bed just above,