Slow Life Blog from the Lake District
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Ivorish

19/12/2016

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The Japanese comedian, Yuriko Katani makes fun of the British use of ‘ish’, a concept which is unknown in Japan. She said that she suggested to her mother that they should meet for lunch at somewhere between five past one and half past, and that her mother reacted at first with scorn, and then with hatred. Could it be, she wondered, that we are called Brit’ish’ because of our fondness for the concept?

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The Itoshima tea plantation

19/12/2016

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Now that the garden has been cleared, the fun begins. We started with a visit to Yame, where Fukuoka’s best tea is grown, to see the champion tea grower of them all, Akihito Takaki. Aki has ten hectares of tea plantation, which may not seem much, but it’s enough to harvest 20 tons of leaves, which make 4 tons of green and black tea. Those beautifully manicured rows of tea are harvested by machine- the hand picked plants are far less ornamental. Fortuitously, Aki also supplies one year old plants, of which he has a stock of a million, no less.

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Workaways

17/12/2016

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Kevin, from the US, but with Chinese parents, and Laura from Canada arrived on the first day, and stayed to the end, ten weeks later. In between they were joined by 15 females and 6 males, from four continents and ranging in age from seventeen to sixty. These were the Workaway volunteers who exchanged 5 hours of hard work a day for free food and lodging.

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The Itoshima garden project

16/12/2016

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In 2000 Hilton Hotels bought the side of a mountain by the coast in Itoshima, intending to build a resort there. Unfortunately for them this was prime oyster territory and the local fishermen kicked up such a stink about the threat of pollution that the scheme foundered. My friend Minohara-San bought the 70 hectares for a song. When he heard that I was looking for land to build a house and garden he very kindly offered me a plot right on top of the mountain, and this gave rise to the idea of creating a ‘Slow Life’ village where city dwellers could come and find out about the ways of the countryside. But he had placed the land in the hands of an educational charity who wouldn’t allow any buildings, whatever the environmental credentials, so the scheme fell by the by.

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    ​About Slow Life

    The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

    Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

    This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.

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Jonathan Denby's Slow Life blog from the Lake District

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