Sado - Bamboo Forest and Day Off

Today we meet at 9:30 in front of the temple and divide ourselves to clean up and tidy up the community spaces. I am assigned to the kitchen and about an hour later, everything is wiped down and the floor is vacuumed. For the rest of the day, we help Keiko, the mother of the monk who owns the Koninji Temple, to clear a portion of the bamboo forest of fallen trees. The trees often fall during winter because they cannot bear the weight of the snow. Each of us receives a saw and we cut the damaged trees about one meter above the ground. Then, we trim off all the small branches and carry the bare trunks to the temple to make garden furniture. Keiko, despite being 82 years old, is still very fit and carries a five-meter-long bamboo up the hill all by herself. We work for about two to three hours with a break for lunch and then we carry the cut branches to the campsite. The next day, a school class will arrive for a three-day stay, and the ground in front of the tents is very muddy. Therefore, we cover it with the branches so that people can walk on it more easily. After we finish everything, we explore the surrounding area of the temple a bit and then I enjoy the first sunny day since I arrived by sitting in the garden and reading.
On Wednesday, we have a day off as a replacement for Sunday. We decided to walk down to the city and visit a temple, shrine, and the harbor. The way down takes about an hour, but with such a great view, it doesn't matter and it's downhill. The shrine is rather small, but it has the typical big red gate of shrines. The Buddhist temple also has a gate at the bottom, but it is slightly larger and brown. On the way up, there are wooden animals placed on the sides to the left and right. The temple garden itself is not very exciting and kept simple, so we head back toward the city to find something to eat. Since Hamochi is not a major port city, there aren't really any restaurants or stands where we can eat, so we have to get some snacks from the supermarket and convenience store. With our lunch packed, we walk for about another hour to the harbor and sit down on a bench. On the way back, we ask Nozomi, the project leader in Sado, if she can pick us up on the way down so that we can save the trip back up. The evening is planned for a lecture on marine pollution, which takes place at a community center in Hamochi, as the school class arrived this afternoon. After dinner, we attend the lecture, and I have already heard many things, such as that light and noise are also categorized as pollution and particularly harm animals that navigate with sound waves or rely on moonlight. Some information was new to me, though, such as that the tanks on regular ships are simply rinsed with seawater during operation, which results in a large amount of oil entering the sea. In the end, we receive information about the schedule for the next three days and then it's back up to the temple.