A veritable smörgåsbord of junk
Today's collection came from a couple places I have already cleaned up once before (i.e. people have littered there again), plus some bits from the shore:
Two big glass buoys
Two small glass buoys
Fiberglass boat hull section
Bottles and cans
Seaweed jelly noodles (double pack food container)
Extension cord
Pickax head
Plastic shopping bag full of random garbage
One C cell battery
Tattered canvas scrap with grommets
Assorted food/sweets wrappers, paper, cigarette butts, plastic scraps
Big window pane shard
Empty plastic sandbag
The plastic shopping bag full of random garbage is baffling to me. It was tied to an iron stake down by the shore. Someone intentionally filled the bag with garbage (from their home or from the landscape?) and then tied it up and left it. It made my job easier, though!
The pickax is a great, but not uncommon, find. In the past, I have come across all kinds of tools all over the island. People must have either forgotten them in their gardens, or left them at a work site so they wouldn't have to carry back and forth everyday, only to forget or abandon them in the end. Most of the tools have rotted wooden handles, that can easily be replace, and are covered in rust. However, they are still absolutely useful. Maybe we can use this pickax to break ground on our buoy-windowed dream house (keep reading)!
I would like to make a distinction between disaster debris and just plain old garbage strewn about the island. The boat hull section and possibly the canvas scrap were the only things that may have been brought ashore during the tsunami. Everything else is garbage that my neighbors have chosen to throw away in the forests, fields and sea around Ajishima.
Finally, I have a confession to make: I LOVE glass buoys. I think they are the coolest thing. I have been collecting them from all over the island since we moved here. I have in my mind a design for a house we would like to build once we have our own piece of land. It would be a small space with walls made of earth and there would be dozens of glass buoys embedded within as windows. So, needless to say, today's buoys are definite keepers and we will be able to easily repurpose these. The coolest thing is when I found the two big ones an islander was watching and later came over and gave me the two small ones. Maybe we can set a precedent and others will start pitching in too.
Two big glass buoys
Two small glass buoys
Fiberglass boat hull section
Bottles and cans
Seaweed jelly noodles (double pack food container)
Extension cord
Pickax head
Plastic shopping bag full of random garbage
One C cell battery
Tattered canvas scrap with grommets
Assorted food/sweets wrappers, paper, cigarette butts, plastic scraps
Big window pane shard
Empty plastic sandbag
The plastic shopping bag full of random garbage is baffling to me. It was tied to an iron stake down by the shore. Someone intentionally filled the bag with garbage (from their home or from the landscape?) and then tied it up and left it. It made my job easier, though!
The pickax is a great, but not uncommon, find. In the past, I have come across all kinds of tools all over the island. People must have either forgotten them in their gardens, or left them at a work site so they wouldn't have to carry back and forth everyday, only to forget or abandon them in the end. Most of the tools have rotted wooden handles, that can easily be replace, and are covered in rust. However, they are still absolutely useful. Maybe we can use this pickax to break ground on our buoy-windowed dream house (keep reading)!
I would like to make a distinction between disaster debris and just plain old garbage strewn about the island. The boat hull section and possibly the canvas scrap were the only things that may have been brought ashore during the tsunami. Everything else is garbage that my neighbors have chosen to throw away in the forests, fields and sea around Ajishima.
Finally, I have a confession to make: I LOVE glass buoys. I think they are the coolest thing. I have been collecting them from all over the island since we moved here. I have in my mind a design for a house we would like to build once we have our own piece of land. It would be a small space with walls made of earth and there would be dozens of glass buoys embedded within as windows. So, needless to say, today's buoys are definite keepers and we will be able to easily repurpose these. The coolest thing is when I found the two big ones an islander was watching and later came over and gave me the two small ones. Maybe we can set a precedent and others will start pitching in too.
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