Sado - Bambooforest and crafting with bamboo

In the morning, we are making iron water again today to clean the pond for the rice fields. After lunch, we drive to a patch of bamboo forest where many trees have fallen due to the snow. Since these damaged forests are scattered all over the island and some are in hard-to-reach areas, a lot of manual cleanup is required. For two hours, we carry the broken tree trunks from the slope where they fell, cut them into smaller 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 patch of forest we want to clean up is about 50 meters long, and after all the work, we have cleared about a meter of width. There is hardly any visible difference from before, but we have to start somewhere. The next day, in the morning, we continue where we left off the day before. This time we work for three hours, and Megumi is also with us today. Since we plan to work with bamboo in the afternoon, she cuts down a thick bamboo that narrowly misses me when it falls. Each of us saws off a piece for ourselves and sets everything aside. By 12 o'clock, we are completely exhausted, we sit by the side of the road and wait to be picked up. We drive to Megumi's house and have lunch there first. Afterward, we retrieve our bamboo pieces and start making chopsticks and spoons out of them. I am very grateful for having 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. Unfortunately, we have other plans as well, and I have to interrupt my work. Megumi shows us how to make a special kind of Mochi that is wrapped in a leaf and then steamed. The preparation is very simple, but the eating part is not so easy. They are so sticky that you even have trouble opening the leaves, but at least it gets a little better when you sprinkle the soy powder mixture that goes with it. Despite the difficulties with the food, they taste very good. We have some time left before we get picked up again, and I grab a carving knife and work on my spoon for a while