He Escaped The Matrix

I was living in Singapore I actually calculated   how much it cost me every second  to exist it was a price to live   to breathe I escaped all that that stuff I didn't  think Japan could offer me this kind of freedom Welcome to Kyushu, Japan. We'll be spending today with Rupert... ...who together with his wife... ...lives a simple life in rural Japan. We'll soon go to his rice field to see how the seedlings are doing. We'll walk to the water source of the valley. And visit a sacred site. In the afternoon, we'll go look for wild foods. And prepare a special dinner. Taking care of the animals is the first chore of the day. well if i take my gloves off yeah still fairly warm so that's our breakfast then half an egg Rupert wants to take the goat for a walk. problem with a goat is it takes about an hour to   get like you know what would  take one minute to walk. no, she's got her own agenda are you coming or  not come on. I feel real in the countryside   and when I lived in the city it was  like it was something not connecting yes...no... all right...go ahead We didn't make it very far. you have to almost imprison  them or she'll just e scape The village highway :) Rice Patrol well it's quite easy to open that there master of design (laughs) Rupert built the fence last year to keep boars out. the beauty of how we grow rice is we don't have  to buy seeds we're using seeds old seeds from last   year there's sometimes quite added differentiate  a weed from the rice at the start. There is this distinctive   shape to it. This is almost the size that they  would plant with a machine but I'm gonna wait   one month so it's roots are beautiful and big  and strong and then plant it into my field Rupert will soon be transplanting the seedlings here. Just like he did last year. so there's a massive difference between machine  grown rice and manual cultivation but no one wants   to do manual because it's hard work the neighbors  that look upon me as old-fashioned because I grow   without insecticide. they utterly think I'm nuts  when in fact I'm probably the future of farming imagine if it doesn't work but the good  thing about nature is it always works Time for some geography! and if I want some peace  and quiet I can go to the source of   where our water comes from it's a lake up  there nobody I'm talking no one just fish   I'm gonna get a boat at some point and just you  know float that's a big Branch it's not coming   out I've got him it's cherry blossom  cherry wood that'll be good for the fire they built it around 100 years ago and it's  like a really quite complex system that channels   water down to all the fields in the valley you  can't just let the water come off the mountain   because it'll just flood and landslides  and everything so it's controlled and I'm   in charge of the valves over here let's go and  have a look there's a diagonal pipe with four   holes so you get a nice water flow  here into my field once the level   of the lake goes down to a certain  level you can unplug the other valve   and then you keep going like that and then  when it rains you have to plug it back up this water's coming from well the reservoir and  it's going down towards my house this is feeding   my rice basically Sunday we did Community cleaning  another Village task and you have to adjust it   depending on the weather so I mean every day,  checking the weather and if there's too much water   going down here it's not good so if there's too  much water oh I'll get my feet wet I do do this that's quite beautiful I just made a waterfall another Community Gathering we do every year is we  have this there's a water Shrine and we make this   actually it's an it's an octopus biodegradable  it's it'll be gone by next year I think eight legs   means good luck and it's got these are full of  sake so we did it maybe five months ago every year   it's replaced so not only is the water important  for my rice it's it's sort of spiritual importance Time for some housekeeping. if you buy a farmhouse in Japan you don't just buy  the house you will buy everything this is good and   bad because it will be either full of junk or  full of priceless antiques actually i come up here   just to find things for free rice cooker it's  brand new it's probably 60 years old I found a   hose pipe the other day here a lot of people don't  know what insecticide smells like it is like pure   pure evil so I just try and get rid of all those  things maybe after five years I'm still cleaning convenience is removed from  the countryside and actually   inconvenience it's not a bad thing  yeah maybe I like inconvenience what i don't have is a mercedes benz and things like that. what I have I have a lot of wood which is  beautiful and I can use it to renovate the house   when I was given this house there was  the owner right and he had the top of the   range BMW and I picked up this ladder and I didn't  realize where it was like going I nearly trashed   his car... his expression... what isn't scratched here?  Maybe that's that's a concept for Life: scratch Until last year Rupert and his wife lived in another valley. This is their old house. But something happened that made it impossible to stay. Japan has this thing with pouring  cement into its rivers in the name   of flood management so they literally  over three years removed the local River This is an important part of Rupert's story. there's the river So I asked him to show us. next to the temple look at it is that a river?   if you've got children would you like to  bring them to sit by the river have a picnic? there's a lot of money involved  this is the trillions of Yen and   for six households in the middle of nowhere?   five years ago I would pick wild Watercress  in the river so not much chance of that now I mean all the locals just  know I was totally against this geez can can you see the size of that mound of  soil imagine all that had to come past my house   the front door it seems insane  that's the river basically it was the trucks past the house the  exhaust fumes... the other house turned   into not what the countryside means for me  that destruction of nature I couldn't take it I guess my dreams to buy a mountain  and have a sign at the bottom: go away Behind the new house is a small hill. A mini mountain :) I was attracted to this house because it has  tea plantation but it's a small one I suppose   you could call it intimate every year you can make  your own tea to last a year I don't want to sell   kilograms of tea I just  want tea for me that rhymes tea for me and it's free what I like is  all the animals they love it up here so   you've got this like nice atmosphere of  the goats and cats picking tea and then   I'll take it downstairs I call downstairs this is  upstairs that's downstairs and process the tea   [sings] I've got little songs for the animals   [sings] we found them next to a  bag of plaster Shikkui so that's her name she has a   brother, Tomi, cats are important if you live in  a Japanese Countryside because they catch snakes Time to pick some dinner. It's still too early in the season for main garden crops. But the back garden is full of wild plants. it's the wild vegetables I'm learning from   I go and pick them and I see where  they're growing and then I just replant I've got this beautiful flow of mountain spring  water constantly every day going past the house This water is also from the lake. This plot of land actually replicates the mountain   behind me so I I kind of know where I  can plant things so I picked this herb it's called mitsuba and basically I love  Japanese words because they're quite logical   mitsu means three so it's really  easy to recognize three leaves tastes pretty good as well mitsuba taste they're   like growing everywhere loving  it probably because of this water   if you do natural farming you don't need to learn  anything other than climbing a mountain and You   observe how nature Works natural farming's  observation really rather than interaction I mean good thing about nature  in Japan is you can eat most of   it hakobe - chickweed - nice delicious  tastes a bit like sort of nutty you   can eat it almost all year round and  it's here so I got free free salad Tea leaves are also going into the basket. I'm gonna fry it - tempura - because now it's  getting late in the season so it's perfect [for that] Along with some Sansho Pepper. the flavor from that ... it's like intense  I'm not into importing anything, global   consumerism and all that, but transplanting these  herbs to my back Garden that's quite interesting black rice you don't polish so I just need to almost delicately grind  it so it just takes the outer layer of   so I've carved this wood you can see the oils  from the rice making it beautiful so I had to   cut these runes here designed to handle  from beautiful old bamboo and it pivots beautiful this weighs three kilograms and it's  kind of the correct weight actually everyone would   think why aren't you using Stone but you can't  for Rice because uh you'd crush the rice well   you'd end up with rice flour the whole world  wants progress they just want to do something   better and better so you know well machines and  can't you just like do it like they used to do   it mechanization I think creates some kind of  negative charge so that's why I do my rice like   this I don't need a machine and I've got enough  time in the day to you know play with my rice after I've de-husked on this this momisori it's  called you've basically got the grains but you   also got the husk mixed together so you need to  separate them I'll put it in a rice winnower which   is over there but if you don't want to use that  and you're doing a small amount you can actually   just let the wind do do the work so the husk  will just blow away from the rice yeah just   like look the chickens they can have some they  look beautiful but the wind blowing they like it After some more polishing... ...we enjoyed truly artisinal black rice. Served with tea leaf tempura. And home-made tea. imagine these people wanted to make millions of  dollars and I I want to earn nothing the simplest   thing is the best I think that's the fundamental  thing to have nothing is Maybe everything   so that's good so now Jesus the mosquitoes are quite strong  are you filming this country life where   are they coming from i don't know... they are not  mosquitoes... hey it doesn't even stop them this way Japan if you don't like  mosquitoes just go live in Spain

Channel: Growing Small

Views: 3,137,979

Keywords: simple living in rural japan, a beautiful day in rural japan, slow living japan

Id: TiW9V9PQrVg

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023