Maximum Capacity

Day 8 Monday 16th August 2010

Morning time and it’s off to Conan mega store to pick up our gravel. The place was just jumping with old people buying seeds. We find our gravel and a cute girl loads it onto our truck with a forklift. This is what I like about this country. At home you would never see a girl operating a forklift and even if you did she would be some old boiler with tree trunks for arms.  Kei trucks have a max load capacity of just 350kgs so this is going to take 3 trips up and down the mountain.  I’m going to be on first name terms with lightstick man by the end of the day. The truck performed OK but the handling was a bit shady. For our last load I pushed it up to 400kgs….don’t try this at home, I’m a professional!!

Lazymans Lawn

1100kgs uncut

We met the debtor’s brother at the house and he was really cool. We were a bit worried about their attitude, after all we have just bought their house which the court had seized and made them leave. He gave us a key and told us not to worry about the contents of the house. He told us what we already knew…that all the stuff was basically crap and of not much value. He told us his brother’s wife would come over and take it away. Meantime we could start to tidy up the interior.  One quick look around confirmed that it is going to be a big job. We laid all the pebbles today and  our Zen garden looks sweet.  One thing I’ve noticed about the summer daytime temperature here is that it’s opposite to what I’m used to in NZ. In Auckland the early mornings are cool with no breeze. The hottest part of the day is 12-2 PM after which a sea breeze kicks in and brings the temp down. Evenings are usually breezy and the nights cool off. Here the breeze is in the morning and the hottest part of the day seems to be about 4-5pm when the breeze dies away.  Every day it has reached 33 degrees which is plenty hot for me.  Downtown Kyoto and Osaka have been worse with 38 degrees.