We need a green!

Recently, we put around our customer's garden with lawn. The areas are about 100 ㎡.　 We bought the lawn mats below at the DIY store.



The kind of the grass is himekouraishiba which is native grass. The price is 600 USD in total including sandy soil for keeping moisture in the lawn mats . This mat is 5USD per square meter.

There aren't lots of lawn fields that much in Japan. Even though around 60% of our land is greenary, we mostly have asphalt, concrete and soil surface in the city. The schoolyard, parks and gardens of our house are soil, no green. The reason could be a problem of the cost and maintenance for Japanese people. Japanese people dislike its maintenance, and when
the people buying house want to reduce the construction cost of the house, firstly they reduce a plant or a garden.

However, maintenance is actually not so hard, just using a lown mower in a month in case of the himekouraishiba. It becomes a good excercise.

I do not understand why Japanese people do not attach importance to planting and scenery of green. There is no recognition that the garden and planting improve one's standard of living.

There is an advantage more than the disadvantage of cost and maintenance. For instance, it is various effect such as cooling, improving child's physical ability, relaxing and so on. Houses also look better from greenary.

This is the lawn mat. I would like to know how you put the lawn in your garden.

Cherry blossom & Rapeseed

Near our construction site, we could see cherry blossom and rapeseed located in Omuta city, Fukuoka. They are Japanese spring flowers. This conbination of pink and yellow colors are rare. It's worth to see it.

We can see this scenery for only a short time, because pink one are falling in a few week, yellow one will be fertilizer, we also eat this yellow. It's worth to see it.

In this season, Japanese people enjoy a picnic or BBQ under the cherry blossom, the most important thin is surely "Beer".

This below is called "Garyubai" which means "Lying down dragon". This name could come from its trunk shape like a dragon. Actually, it is a plum tree near this place.

We love these flowers because we could feel that spring is comming, and make us happy.

Floor materials

The carpenters is putting piece of lumber on the floor. The material is a solid material of Cherry blossoms. Our customers, recently many people in Japan as well, prefer to the natural materials, for instant, oak, chestnut, cypress, pine, cedar and you name it.






You can see white pieces of tape which is a spacer that stands between the floor board that the carpenter prepared. It is a string basically used for packing. The solid material shrinks and expands because wood absorbs and desorbs moisture. This causes creaking sound of the floor. To reduce the sound, the spacer gives space that solid wood can move and reduces creaking.




The carpenters know the character of wood and make good use of their wisdom like the above mentioned matter. I can learn lots of things from them.

Insulator

This is the site of installation of insulation. I took the photo from inside of our home which we are building at present. Between the pillars and braces, we fill the glass wool up. This glass wool is made of fiber glass, reusing waste glass. In Japan, we usually use glass wool, in other way, rock wool, real wool, urethane form can be used. Its performance must meet the specification of evergy saving standard.

In other part, we install the 50mm foamed polystyrene board underneath the roof. The part of white sheet has water-proof and moisture-penetration capability.




These insulators keep our home cool and warm through the year. Privately, I prefer nature materials to artificial items. What do we have? Wool, cellulose, hemp ..... I want to find something else.

Spirit of a carpenter.

Here comes our carpenter. He has got justice, courage, courtesy and sincerity like Bushido. He is not talkative of the old school of craftsmen, he is still young though.






He is a capable carpenter, always tidy up a construction site and gives us many ideas.



He gave me a Belgian chocolate as my birthday present today. I am really proud of you, not because of the chocolate. We are so proud of your spirit, skills and attitude.

Construction site of prefabricated bath

This is a construction site of a prefabricated bath. We, Japanese call it as "Unit bath", it should be Japanese English.

Its design is quite simple, but little boring. Privately, I prefer the traditional wooden bath to this one, but most of the Japanese bath is prefabricated bath due to its cost.

The bath is almost assembled.

Construction site of a Japanese wooden house

Hi! I have attached the video using "You Tube" to show you our construction site of custom-order, wodden Japanese house. I was embarrassed and nervous though. I mainly explain structure of the house. For instant, every wooden part, hardwares and a carpenter.



The orange color on the pillars is pesticide against termites. It has to be painted on pillars and basements compulsory here. White sheet on the wall is like tyvek which has a capability of waterproof and moisture penetration.