January 25 (Sunday), we had our monthly forestry day.
Everyone came and got the wood ready for Chan’s homa.
On February 5 (Thursday), it will be the 49th day since he died, and his friends are coming to burn a homa at his hoji memorial.

You can see on the far left of the above picture, our visitor from Minnesota, USA, Adam. He’s going to spend two months in Kamiyama working on his art. (He really helped out a lot during forestry day)

(I had heard he was a painter, but apparently he had also been involved in filmmaking for quite a long time)

Among our members we have people of a variety of professions, but we don’t have any buddhist priests. We weren’t really sure how to stack wood for a proper homa. In the end, we (reluctantly) built it more or less how you’d build a campfire.

Koko, please arrange it however you think is best.

We prepared thirty six pieces of wood, each 120cm in length. If we put it all together we’d have a nine story tower. (Mind you, that’s far too tall!)

The women worked really hard too.

On the right, you can see Koko gathering branches for the homa.

Adam was very serious about his work. (He stuck with us to the very end. Even into the onsen! (haha))

Mitsuyo Matsumura from the coffee shop Matsuba-an! Thank you once again for supplying the crew with your delicious coffee. Hot coffee is the best on a cold day.

Toru Nakamura headed this month’s lunch team, which was comprised of himself, Camomile Shoji, Princess Saya’s Grandma, and Mr. Higashidani’s wife. Thank you very much.
Here are some pictures of lunch posted by Mr. Nakamura on the Japanese blog.

Partway through the day, we skipped out to join in on an old-fashioned “mochi-nage” at the topping out ceremony of the Shiromomo house. Mr. Nikishima has posted pictures on the Japanese blog.

The next forestry day is February 15 (Sunday).
We haven’t decided who will prepare lunch.
If you have time, please volunteer!