I was saying one time that my firewood was too long for my fireplace and
a friend of mine brought a chainsaw over to cut it up for me. He did an amazing
job in absolutely no time at all and when he was done he asked me, seemingly
not yet had his fill, “What else?” Since he was so kind as to offer, I got him
to cut down two dead trees that had been bothering me. He looked them over
completely, from the topmost branches all the way down: his felling method was
textbook. He effortlessly put the blade in at the right angle and applied the
right amount of force without having to think about it and had judged
everything perfectly.
Even though it had been cloudy up to that point, our good friend the sun had come out and I had worked up a bit of a sweat just snapping all of the twigs. Having cut everything down to fireplace size, my friend put down his tools and asked “Do you have a screwdriver and a spanner?” I went back into the house and one by one I opened up the drawers of my medicine chest where I keep such things. The drawers have the names of different medicinal plants written on them in kanji, so I should remember that kuzu has the screwdriver and that the spanner is in saiko and put them back there, but I still can't.
When I came back with the tools, my friend reset the now jammed blades on his saw with an experienced hand. He's probably been using that same old chainsaw for a long time, repairing it like this all the while. When I asked him about it, he said “I've been using it for around 20 years”. He's enjoyed doing DIY since he was a young man and has sunk a lot of money into it, buying good tools. “With good tools, you can keep fixing them and using them no matter how many years go by.”
I thought back to when I went to England for the first time. It was the early 80s and Japan was awash with things. I'd jumped to the conclusion that the lifestyle I had caught a glimpse of during a brief homestay in America was “the Western way of life” and was surprised when I saw the appliances the British were using: deafening, wailing vacuum cleaners with external bags, antique-looking irons that must have weighed three kilos, machines that were designed to push the wrinkles out of sheets with sheer elbow grease.
These British people just loved using their old appliances. Even though these machines were big and heavy and loud, they wouldn't throw them out. Their philosophy was that as long as you can fix it, you keep repairing it until it finally gives. Being British, my ex-husband was great at repairing bikes and washing machines....And that's how he got four broken toaster-ovens out of a rubbish dump in Roppongi, banged them back into good nick, lined them all up and had a Robata style barbecue party at his place.... It was in his roots.
Now, at the time, I had been brainwashed into thinking that small, lightweight plastic products were the height of sophistication and it was a long time before I realised the profundity of this British, old-fashioned way of living.
In the old days, Japanese people all took care of their things. My 86 year old father is still a pro at fixing things. A vacuum cleaner that's short circuited after taking a tumble, a telephone receiver that's got water in it and you can't hear anything out of, a sluggish tape measure that won't wind back up properly – he can take anything apart and fix it right up. Up until last year he was the standing grounds manager for a high school baseball pitch and even there he would be telling the high school kids “Don't just throw things away” and teaching them how to fix things.
When did we start throwing things away willy-nilly? We can't just bury everything in the ground. We're digging ourselves into a hole burying our cellphones and computers and all these things that poison the Earth. The era of us replacing our old things without a care in the world even if they're not broken, buying up the newest model for no other reason than the fact that it's just come out, is at an end.
As we speak, my friend is oiling his chainsaw, polishing it up as good as new.
Even though it had been cloudy up to that point, our good friend the sun had come out and I had worked up a bit of a sweat just snapping all of the twigs. Having cut everything down to fireplace size, my friend put down his tools and asked “Do you have a screwdriver and a spanner?” I went back into the house and one by one I opened up the drawers of my medicine chest where I keep such things. The drawers have the names of different medicinal plants written on them in kanji, so I should remember that kuzu has the screwdriver and that the spanner is in saiko and put them back there, but I still can't.
When I came back with the tools, my friend reset the now jammed blades on his saw with an experienced hand. He's probably been using that same old chainsaw for a long time, repairing it like this all the while. When I asked him about it, he said “I've been using it for around 20 years”. He's enjoyed doing DIY since he was a young man and has sunk a lot of money into it, buying good tools. “With good tools, you can keep fixing them and using them no matter how many years go by.”
I thought back to when I went to England for the first time. It was the early 80s and Japan was awash with things. I'd jumped to the conclusion that the lifestyle I had caught a glimpse of during a brief homestay in America was “the Western way of life” and was surprised when I saw the appliances the British were using: deafening, wailing vacuum cleaners with external bags, antique-looking irons that must have weighed three kilos, machines that were designed to push the wrinkles out of sheets with sheer elbow grease.
These British people just loved using their old appliances. Even though these machines were big and heavy and loud, they wouldn't throw them out. Their philosophy was that as long as you can fix it, you keep repairing it until it finally gives. Being British, my ex-husband was great at repairing bikes and washing machines....And that's how he got four broken toaster-ovens out of a rubbish dump in Roppongi, banged them back into good nick, lined them all up and had a Robata style barbecue party at his place.... It was in his roots.
Now, at the time, I had been brainwashed into thinking that small, lightweight plastic products were the height of sophistication and it was a long time before I realised the profundity of this British, old-fashioned way of living.
In the old days, Japanese people all took care of their things. My 86 year old father is still a pro at fixing things. A vacuum cleaner that's short circuited after taking a tumble, a telephone receiver that's got water in it and you can't hear anything out of, a sluggish tape measure that won't wind back up properly – he can take anything apart and fix it right up. Up until last year he was the standing grounds manager for a high school baseball pitch and even there he would be telling the high school kids “Don't just throw things away” and teaching them how to fix things.
When did we start throwing things away willy-nilly? We can't just bury everything in the ground. We're digging ourselves into a hole burying our cellphones and computers and all these things that poison the Earth. The era of us replacing our old things without a care in the world even if they're not broken, buying up the newest model for no other reason than the fact that it's just come out, is at an end.
As we speak, my friend is oiling his chainsaw, polishing it up as good as new.
The dead tree I got him to cut down for me.
(Technically it's my neighbour's tree but I gave him some firewood in
exchange for letting me chop it down).
[You can find the original article in Japanese 「モノを大切に」here. It was posted in July 2012.]
