I returned to the island on June 16th, the day of Kamuro River Clean-up.
The weather forecast was bad and on the 14th, the day I returned to the island, it started raining around Otake at 8:30. The rain continued all day. I spent the day repairing the broken screen door and cleaning the room.
On the 15th, I mowed the grass around my house. I left the house around 7am, but it was raining, so I spent the time transcribing newspaper columns and writing in my diary. It became light outside around 8:30am, so I started mowing the grass. This is the first time I've mowed the grass since the May holidays. It was during the period when the grass grows the most, so mowing this time was quite hard work.
After finishing, I took a shower and looked at the clock and it was 11:30. I was tired and didn't feel like doing anything, so I skipped lunch and started drinking whiskey with bananas, kiwis, and prosciutto that were around me.
I felt a coolness from the breeze coming into the room. The sea showed a pattern of light and shade without any waves because the wind and the tide flowed in the same direction. I took out Shuhei Fujisawa's "Umisaka-han Daizen Vol. 1" from the bookshelf and started to read. The first book was "Ansatsu no Nenrin (Annual Rings of Assassination)." It is his representative work for which he won the Naoki Prize, but having just finished reading it, I felt an indescribable weight. I got tired of reading, so I turned the pages of Ken Domon's photo collection "Fukei (Landscape)" from his later years and went back to drinking. It was a work that he took on photography trips after his illness left him physically disabled and he had his assistant push his wheelchair, so I felt a sense of kindness and weight in it and was able to watch it with a good feeling.
On the day of the river cleanup, the morning in Kamuro begins early. At 6 o'clock, the island's PA system announces the cleanup. As breakfast is over, we change into work clothes and head to the meeting place. The river cleanup involves removing sand and garbage that has washed down from the mountains and accumulated in a box on the shoreline. It is hard work. There are six of us: O-san and Y-san, who are over 77 years old; four of my classmates who will be elderly this year; S-san, a local volunteer; and a man in his 40s who is staying here for a trial period. We work tirelessly, but steadily, and finish up after 8 o'clock by sorting the garbage that has washed up on the slipway in Kariyama Ward, which was not planned.
When I checked the scheduled date for the "Ocean Clean-up" in July, it was July 2nd, so it might be difficult to return to the island...
I tidied up the room, did the laundry, sprayed Balsan all over the room, and then left the island.
I'm thinking of using the long weekend around "Marine Day" to return to the island again.
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