Michiyo-chan petting a cat by a Konohana Family chicken coop.

Last fall I visited Japan for the very first time. I went to report on a few stories there, supported by a grant from the Finnish Ministry of the Environment they give to reporters and photojournalists. One of those stories was about an organic farming community called Konohana Family, which has been around for over 20 years and has over 80 members sharing the same lifestyle.

I spent three nights at KF on my assignment and was able to participate in many community activities. Michiyo-chan, a wonderful lady who was my guide and translator (most everybody had the 'chan' suffix added to their name, meaning 'sweetheart'. They are into love and the universe, you'll see), usually takes care of the Family's international visitors and maintains the website, providing information in English to people who want to visit the community. The story ran on the Kaleva website in January.

The Family is a vegetarian community with people from toddlers to seniors. They are actively promoting a sustainable lifestyle. They are able to live off of 10% of their agricultural production (veggies, rice, honey, beans, fruit--you name it, they have it) and they sell the rest locally. They have a spiritual leader, Isadon, who was visited by first the spirit of his grandmother and then the spirit of Buddha, for years at a time. They try to live according to 'universal law' and emphasize that everything is connected: plants, people, the cosmos. They were an interesting bunch. As a foreigner who doesn't speak Japanese, I wasn't able to fully read the situations, but Michiyo and another translator, Tomoko, did their very best to convey everything to me. As opposed to the stereotypical Western idea of hippies, running things willy-nilly, flaking out on everything, being so far out, man, these guys seemed very Japanese in the way everything functioned like clockwork and was really organized. The kids seemed happy to live in the community, going to public school in the Fujinomiya area.

The story ran with plenty of photographs from my stay but in this post I wanted to share some environmental portraits from the assignment. It was a busy three days, trying to cover everything I had in mind and also being ready for whatever happened.

Yasue-don. She offered me some amazake, a traditional sweet drink made from fermented rice.

Toshi-chan ran a pottery class for the kids.

Konohana Family has a delivery center, where they pack and transport their various agricultural products or work on produce.

Kat-chan, working at the chicken coop. Most of the KF members are women.

The chicken coop was the first place where I ran into the Joro spider. Jesus Christ! Coming from a land of puny, laughable spiders, that thing was the stuff of nightmares. That spider is also everywhere in the Japanese countryside. I saw dozens of them. The females are really beautiful, but dear Lord that thing is big. I walked face-first into a spider web and when I saw the spider, it took all my effort not to scream like a girl--or a boy, for that matter--and run away, which would have surely given Michiyo pause. That night I woke up on my futon and saw a Joro spider descending from the lamp above my bedding, coming closer to my face. I sat up quickly and swatted it away, only to realize that there was no spider and it was a dream. Or was it?

(Michiyo told me they have even bigger spiders that are huge and superfast. Those I didn't see. But I did see the Japanese giant hornet. A beast. Many of them. Note to self: Never go to Japanese countryside again.)

KF farms land that they have leased from the township of Fujiyama. They don't use any industrial fertilizers or pesticides.

This is Aki-chan, who was working on the field snugly situated between houses. She and the other workers were fertilizing the ground with a mixture of neem and bokashi.

Junji, one of the founding members. He's all about the flow.

All of my Konohana work was straight-up photojournalistic, available light, no flash. I needed to be mobile and use minimal gear which meant I put my 24-70mm workhorse lens to good use on the job. It was overcast for all of my stay, so I had easy light but nothing spectacular to work with.

These guys made onigiri for a picnic in the communal space of KF. The man in the picture is Yajio, who used to own a soba restaurant. Mmm, soba. Mmm, ramen. Mmm, okonomiyaki.

Eiko-ba has been with KF since the beginning. At 77 years old she has more energy than many people half her age.

So, Isadon is KF's founder and spiritual leader. He lives in a house a short walk away from the KF main building. He seemed like a charismatic man who likes to spend his time on the fields. He also gave long talks which the KF members transcribed and talked about at the community meetings, which they have each night. He talked about society, the universe, the Konohana way of life and so on. To me personally, any leader/follower dynamic is always a little suspect, but people seemed to embrace the lifestyle. And they do lead an interesting life, aspiring to selflessness.

Michiyo praying (KF members pray before every meal) at my first lunch in KF.

From KF I continued on to Fujisawa, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Yokohama and Tokyo. I posted a bunch of non-assignment stuff on my Tumblr, too.