A nice Frenchman at the bus stop took this picture of me and Mount Fuji!
I arrived at Konohana Family one week ago to begin my Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) course. There are fourteen of us students from all over Japan, and we are immersed in the daily life of 85 Konohana Family members. It is a wonderful, supportive, encouraging and nurturing community. We have had classes all day, everyday since we began, with almost no time to anything else. Today was our day off as will be the coming Saturdays. So, I had a tiny bit of free time to post some pictures from the past week.
Even though we EDE students will have Saturdays off, our hosts keep on working everyday without a day off. I asked why they don’t take any time off from working so hard, and it was explained to me that “a dog doesn’t take a day off from being a dog and a bee doesn’t ever stop being a bee.” So, the Konohana Family members live the life they live everyday.
They do have special celebrations and festivals, but they put in an honest day’s work first. We are actually holding a big birthday party tonight for several KF members. Many groups are performing different forms of entertainment. We EDE students are presenting a demonstration on life and death and all the problems that arise in between. If we can change our way of thinking and move towards a new model of interconnectedness, we can link together and help each other through anything. After that we are going to do a series of dances that where we start out alone and then slowly pair up and then join progressively larger groups until everyone on the dance floor is in one writhing mass of humanity!
I will post pictures of the festivities next week end. Until then enjoy these snapshots:
Even though we EDE students will have Saturdays off, our hosts keep on working everyday without a day off. I asked why they don’t take any time off from working so hard, and it was explained to me that “a dog doesn’t take a day off from being a dog and a bee doesn’t ever stop being a bee.” So, the Konohana Family members live the life they live everyday.
They do have special celebrations and festivals, but they put in an honest day’s work first. We are actually holding a big birthday party tonight for several KF members. Many groups are performing different forms of entertainment. We EDE students are presenting a demonstration on life and death and all the problems that arise in between. If we can change our way of thinking and move towards a new model of interconnectedness, we can link together and help each other through anything. After that we are going to do a series of dances that where we start out alone and then slowly pair up and then join progressively larger groups until everyone on the dance floor is in one writhing mass of humanity!
I will post pictures of the festivities next week end. Until then enjoy these snapshots:
We took a tour in the rain on our first day of all the fields and green houses.
There are so many sweet and energetic kids here. Not like anywhere else in Japan I have seen.
We have had many visioning and design sessions for what we would like to see in our own ecovillages.
On this day we watched the sunrise then wrote poems about it, and drew pictures and sang original songs too.
We will get Saturday off from studying. Today some of us went to a nearby shrine...
...and we did some spelunking in a cave too!
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