Sado - bamboo forest and carving with bamboo

We are making iron water again this morning to clean the pond for the rice fields. After lunch, we drive to a piece of bamboo forest where many trees have fallen due to the snow. Since these damaged forests are scattered all over the island and sometimes in hard-to-reach places, a lot of manual cleanup is required. For two hours, we carry broken trees from the slope where they fell, cut them into small pieces, and stack them in a gardener's car. Then he takes them away for further processing and returns with an empty car. We fill the loading area four times. The section of forest we want to clean up is about 50 meters long, and after all the work, we have cleared about one meter in width. There is hardly any difference from before, but you have to start somewhere. The next day, we continue where we left off the day before in the morning. This time we work for three hours and Megumi is also with us today. In the afternoon, we want to work with bamboo, so she cuts down a thick bamboo that narrowly misses me when it falls. We each cut off a piece and set everything aside. We are totally exhausted at 12 o'clock, sit down by the roadside, and wait to be picked up. We drive to Megumi's house and have lunch there first. Then we get our pieces of bamboo and start making chopsticks and spoons out of them. I am very grateful to have received training in craftsmanship because my hands don't get tired at all. While the others complain about cramps, I am already on my third pair of chopsticks and could keep going like this all day if I wanted to. Unfortunately, we have other plans and I have to interrupt my work. Megumi shows us how to make a special type of mochi that is wrapped in a leaf and then steamed. The preparation is very simple, but the eating part isn't. They are so sticky that you even have problems opening the leaves, but at least it's a little better if you sprinkle the soy powder mixture that is eaten with it. Despite the difficulties with the food, they taste very good. We still have some time before we are picked up, so I grab a carving knife again and work on my spoon for a while.