An A to Z on Wood Education called 木育 (moku-iku) A to Z.

A to Z is a way of compiling information on a specific topic or theme. It has been used by Shiomi-san in the creation of workbooks for towns, municipalities and rural communities to help them re-discover their charms and attraction in order to generate immigration, help re-populate regions and generate new local business ideas from existing local resources. It has also been used interpersonally between individuals in workshops and during talks to deepen connection between people in a relatively short amount of time. Or even, as in the above example, to help introduce a particular group or project.

As in the top image in this post, a word starting by each letter of the English alphabet is used to describe something related to the topic or theme. Me and Mika decided to create our own A to Z to introduce the different parts of ourselves to you, dear readers.

A

Ayabe

Both Shiomi-san’s hometown and where Mika went to do interviews for her Masters thesis on Part Farming Part X of people that had migrated there to live a different kind of life that what they were living in cities.

B

Breath

Mika practices vipassana meditation each morning for an hour. She also holds sitting meditations at Yōjōen and goes on vipassana retreats a few times a year. I’ve heard her say she finds the breath an endless study.

C

Co-translation

A project and a journey that has been empowering for us both so far, we’ve both grown our capacities around translating Japanese to English quite a bit and have enjoyed collaborating together. This project also inspired Mika to start a translation of another work.

D

Della Duncan

The one that connected us both, she calls herself a renegade economist and facilitates The Work That Reconnects workshops and an course online through Gaia Education. She also is co-host of the Upstream podcast. She was one of Mika’s course facilitators at Schumacher College.

E

Eighty Eight

Both a sacred number in Buddhism (two infinity signs beside each other) and also considered the number of earthly desires that humans have in ancient Buddhist principles, it is in the title of this book and the name of a sacred pilgrimage route on Shikoku island.

F

Farmhouse Inn

An image now commonly associated with the countryside in Japan and the number of which are steadily rising, they are known for their generous breakfasts and dinners made with locally harvested organic ingredients. Ayabe is known for its’ number farmhouse inns.

G

Good Food

Since a major theme of the book is farming, whatever the size of farming with no step being too small, we came up with “good food” for this one. Mika is a macrobiotic chef at Yōjōen and creates the most amazing vegan meals from ingredients in the gardens there from what I’ve seen in pictures she’s shown me.

H

Half Farmer Half X

We are awaiting input on a translation of this term in the book from the 6 people lightly editing it. I prefer using Part Farming Part X as the translation for this term as I think it engenders more creativity and more accurately gets across the message that the farming nor the X doesn’t necessarily need to be for exactly half of your time and energy. It is the concept of Shiomi-san’s that has garnered the most attention.

I

Inspire

Shiomi-san’s favourite word, Mika and I also hope to inspire people to find ways to live more how they want to in translating this book.

J

Japanese

The original language of the book and the subject of one of the Bachelor’s degrees that I hold.

K

Katherina

What to say about myself here that isn’t already in the bio on this blog’s homepage…I invite you to read the What I’m Doing Now page of my personal blog.

L

Local Resources

A major theme in this book that looks at local resources mainly from two angles: food and the undiscovered and untapped innate gifts in people.

M

Macrobiotic

Macrobiotic cooking is the kind of cooking Mika does at Yōjōen. From what I’ve heard about it from Mika and briefly read, it uses locally sourced, organic vegan ingredients, and aims to bring out the nutrients of each ingredient with how it’s cooked. This is to balance the different energies of each ingredient so that the food is medicine as well as sustenance.

N

Nagano

Where Mika lives and works now, it is also the prefecture with the highest number of immigrants from both other prefectures and abroad. I asked Mika if she had any clues as to why this was and she said it is known as a place where immigrations are successful.

O

O-henro

The name of the 88 temple pilgrimage on Shikoku island,  it is one of the few circular-shaped pilgrimages in the world. It includes 88 “official” temples and numerous other sacred sites where Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi) is believed to have trained or have spent time during the 9th Century. If walked, the entire route is about 1,200 kilometers long which allows one to experience the abundant natural surroundings of Shikoku and presents visitors with numerous opportunities to mix with local people. (Taken from the official Tourism Shikoku website).

P

Part Farming

The way that I prefer to translate the “Half Farmer” part of the “Half Farmer Half X” version of the translated concept.

Here is a table from the book that looks at what the farming part of Half Farmer Half X could look like:

Farming	any size: could be on vast land, a veranda or balcony
	any length of time: long or short, or only on the weekend
	any place: in the city or in the countryside
	contents: ingredients for Japanese food or regional produce etc.
	focus: on a sense of wonder or overcoming anthropocentrism

And another table on what the author and people around him think of the farming part of Half Farmer Half X:

thoughts on “farming” in Half Farmer Half X	respect and care towards farming & agriculture
	overcoming or passing through anthropocentrism which has reached extremes
	anticipating the risks of entering an era without fossil fuels and food crises, attending to those risks in a small way
	supporting survival
	wanting to receive inspiration from farming, being outside, and the source of creation
	food that gives peace of mind for the household (no pesticides, more nutritious etc)
	for those who are not confident in doing farming 100% nor want to farm all the time and not shoulding people to do it all the time (reasons: scaling up you’d use chemical agriculture, rather than in a greenhouse, cultivating outside you can only plant what’s in season, without large-scale tilling of the land the soils’ nutrients are more preserved, etc.)
	0% farming is an unappetizing era
	doing 100% farming will not necessarily resolve all the problems in the world
	it’s not 0 and it’s not a hundred either

Q

Questions

At the end of each section in this book is a question to prompt self-reflection and deeper self-inquiry. Me and Mika had a lot of fun answering each of these questions ourselves when we went through each section. In fact, it is the highlight of our reading sessions together for me to hear each other’s answers.

R

Rice Fields

Making an appearance in most photos of the countryside in Ayabe and in Japan at large, we thought this was a very à propos word to choose for this letter.

S

Satoyama

The area between mountain foothills and flat arable land, it is what Ayabe is and is also in the name of the facility Satoyama Net Ayabe which is a place for community interaction, utilizing the repurposed site of a closed elementary school.

T

Translation

A big one, repeating myself a bit from “co-translation” above, this is mine and Mika’s first translation from Japanese to English and we are doing it together. I feel proud that we are collaborating on this together with the capacities we have, bring the skills necessary to make it work together.

U

U-turn

“U-turn” is a Japanese term for the movement of people who were born in rural areas, who then relocated to a city for either school or work, and eventually returned to their home town. 

V

Vision

A topic that’s touched upon several times in the book, the observation that we have lost our ability to envision how we want to live beyond the constraints of what we are told is possible in today’s societies is brought up a few times.

W

Working Holiday

The visa me and my partner are travelling to Japan on this upcoming autumn. In Canada it was recently extended from one year to two years which is the amount of time I was initially wanting to stay for for this experiment and the minimum amount of time I’ve noticed is sufficient for us at the very least to live in one place before having the energy to move again.

X

What is the X in Part Farming Part X?

In Shiomi-san’s co-translated words, it can be something that you like, something that you’re good at, your mission, your calling in life, your fate, the meaning of life, your raison d’être, lifework etc, whatever is fine. I hope you can adapt it to your favourite word.

X	full time or volunteer
	starting a business, a company employee or a civil servant
	If not finding your own X, then supporting those around you.
	not having just 1 X is fine, any number of Xes is okay, or even fluctuating with the seasons
	verbs (connector, healer) rather than nouns (job titles)
	the image of X = a potter continuously refining their work over the course of a lifetime

Y

Yōjō-en

The holistic retreat centre in Azumino, Nagano that Mika contributes to and uses her macrobiotic cooking skills at.

Z

From A, The Classical Compilation Method

The subject of this blog post, we invite you to check out Shiomi-san’s blog on it to see the various ways it’s been used!

That’s all for this week’s newsletter! We appreciate you reading to the end and invite any comments or thoughts on reading this. If you were to create an A to Z, what would it be about?