Worlds most astonishing Indoor farm - Tokyo Business District

Conference room, Head office, Pasona Group Inc.

With all my Japan projects bedded down for the winter, I set out for some sightseeing in my final weekend in Tokyo (Dec 4th) with a visit to the head office of the Parsona Group Inc.



Pasona is a stroll away from Tokyo station, a kind of urban desert of towering concrete and glass.
But it looks like someone at the company decided "Life is for spending, lets do something astonishing" and the result is impeccable, improbable 'urban farm'. Plants are grown mostly under human-supplied light and nourishment, mostly indoors.

I saw lush-looking eggplants, giant daikon radish and beans, with cucumbers and roses climbing the walls. 200 kinds of plants are grown, disease free, all without pesticide. When your a farm isolated in urban concrete, there is nothing really to bug you.


Their full-sized ricefield has three harvests a year. You can see the 'autumn' crop drying in the background.
They brighten the 'HELF' lights and drop them down closer to the paddy as the plants desire - about 5 lux most months, up to 10 lux when the rice kernels are ripening.

The neighbouring building is an energy company. Maybe they got mates rates. I've drunk tea and eaten sweets flecked with real gold, but if you did your calculations, a bowl of this rice would outdo such opulence, easily.


My favorite part of the whole building is this tiny 'willow fence' that slows down the circulating rice paddy water as it gets close to the inlet. The clay-soil edges of the paddy are planted with a natural cover of brave little weeds, but the rice itself grows on palm fibre.

Sakuma-san

Here the agricultural consultant, Sakuma-san, tells me how they make it all work. When I ask what his dream job is, he says to be a regular farmer, under a regular sky, with all the disasters it entails. The predictability is heaven for the rice, but humans need more challenge to flourish.

Matsumoto-san

The office staff all share the task of caring for the 'office pets', the plants. They water, remove withered leaves, and havest the produce for the staff cafeteria upstairs. I chatted with Matsumoto-san and asked if she was a farmer. No, a geologist. The cafe, she tells me, is just delicious.

Audry-san

Pasona is a Temp agency, where young ladies come to be sent out for employment. A young, irresistable Audrey Heburn is their image girl.


Quiz: What color light does lettuce like to eat? Why?


The public cafe, a forest of hanging baskets.



One of the meeting rooms. The furniture is elegant and 'wholemeal' with its raw edges and pencil marks showing. The staff are are proud to say that the glass tabletops were recycled from the old office partitions, and that the floor is made of forest-thinnings. The entire building is a retrofit, and infused with 'green' virtue-points, as listed in their PR materials.


Hydroponic lettuce floating on polystyrene

These plants requested a little more breeze.

Roses love light. In this season, early winter, the plants on the exterior balconies are mostly climbing roses, braving the cold, thin but elegant.



The tall young Japanese are not particularly aware of any food crisis going on. Urban farm's educational posters fill everyone in a bit.
Above are their ideas of of how to solve the food crisis.
The more closely you read it, the more interesting it gets.
They admit its a bit uncertain if all these solutions listed will work.
So, my goal for next year is to have fun events at Parsona, and watch them change that list, with Permaculture in big letters.


The Japanese are astonishing.

I'm showing you these pictures in the Permaculture spirit, that is, that you can find something positive from this story of Pasona, something that gets you into action.
Creating a new culture is hard. Nobody can get it all right in one go. Its okay to do amazing things that have big flaws. Have a lovely vision and make it real the best you can. Others may come along later, get inspired, and finish the work you couldn't.

Porch Garden Renovation: New Year, old trout, at five-star Mt. Baw Baw B & B

photo: Toorongo River Sanctuary

In my typical extreme flexi-resourceful way, two days before New Year's Eve I started to plan the best way to spend it. I lucked upon River Sanctuary's luxury B & B, arranged some balcony garden creation WWOOFing in exchange, then turned up with the gang.

The first thing I saw on awakening to the New Decade was a clear-bottomed, trout-filled stream outside my window, calling me for a dip. After drying off, and a celebratory breakfast, the three of us logged in to start work. Our first task from Boss Bevan: Put on our hiking boots, and design a treasure hunt on the heavenly hiking trail for tomorrow's guests and their children.

'Find a river rock shaped like a cat'
or
'Most imaginative name for a constellation of daisies

(a constellation named....?)

"Man, this WWOOFing gig is tough" teased my friend Kallika, who had just joined our Willing Workers On Organic Farms club, not anticipating party games.


We happened upon some well-equipped fishermen who catch trout.
Just catch them, then send them home again.
Sometimes catch the same guy twice. In the words of the immortal Mitch Headburg 'They don't want to eat it, they just want to make it late for something".
Trout 1 "Where were you, brother?"
Trout 2 "I got caught"
Trout 1 "No you didn't. Show me your lip".

But for such a weird hobby, they were lovely guys, very, very intimate with their trout, even giving me a cuddle.
How? Wet your hands first. Hold lightly and it won't resist.

I try to get the more white-collar wwoofing tasks, one was putting together this map for treasure hunting.
Walk down from the peak. You will see:

The Hut on the Hill.
This place makes you feel you could get an oil lamp, solar panel for the laptop, and live happily ever after.
Looking down on this all day, watching the cows go by

Vagabond village from above. How did I get myself up this high?


No residents right now.


A brief dance on the stage of the old wagon.
Then over the rickey bridge, and home to start work making a Veranda Garden.


You probably wonder why a property as vast as this one needs an edible balcony garden.
The answer is, everyone who likes joy and eating needs a balcony (or edge) garden. A garden that is just a hand's reach away from where you spend time. Where you just happen to keep watch daily, defend from pests, delight in blossomings and perfumes, and get intimate with a microworld of your own creation.

Veranda Garden Creation, with Kyra and french WWOOFers.

We did this:

• Cleared weeds, composted the non-seedy ones (no hot compost yet, just moved in)

• Got rid of most of the pots - with earth this close to where you are sitting, potplants are just bothersome dependents. They don't add to the 'landscape', and and busy B&B owners have better things to do.

• Dug terraces, so the rainwater soaks in, rather than rolls down.

• Went to the river for shoring-up rocks. Too small. So had a swim instead.

• Went harvesting the flaky soft mudstone from hills in the buggy. Scary, going though the river.

• Postitioned the rocks along in Curves drawn with vines

• Attempted an asymetrical Japanese, rather than pearls-and-twinset even look.. Plants spilling over the medium-sized rocks will help.
  

• Popped a few waiting seedings in, after giving them a days revivifying soak.

Once the WWOOFer boys feel up to it, we will get some cow contributions to fertilize, and collect some mulch to keep things snug. After we've gone, Nichole and Bevan can put in their new pet plants. I reccommended blue and yellow flowering edibles: hanging rosemary, chives, chamomile, blue-flowering borage for both bees and pretty salads, and hey, more flowers: alysim, violas, whatever buoys your spirit. Of course, lettuce and rocket, useful old faithfuls. Snail traps will complete the picture.

"My New Years Resolutions?" drawled the Young French WWOOFer, as we carried rocks to terrace the front garden. "More Girls. More Money". The simple life.

Thank-you Bevan, Nichole and Kyra. You gave us a perfectly Happy New Year.

Finally got Laid

Robert Samuel from East Germany, Photo by Cecilia Macaulay

For so long I have desired this, and its finally happened.
A man of excellence, strength and impeccable taste turned up at my house, and with his bare hands and brawn re-laid my bricks. My regimented, bored bricks.

The first day he tossed away the bluestone steps, and layed a delicately fan-shaped array of finely chiseled bricks.
Then he went to they gym.

Bricklayers shirt.

The next day my mate Frank the Creative turned up with a lend of all the right tools, and my landlord did something landlords are not usually known for, but that's just because there's a trick to it. After seeing the quality of Robert's stairs volunteered money for the materials.

When Permie Paul Bonjoirno visited and saw the action in the garden, he commented "It does my head in seeing a German lay bricks. Aren't they're meant to be busy making Mercedes?"

He's a high-tech brickie though, and found a way to video-skype me while adjusting the brick patterns, while I went to teach balcony gardening in Queensland.
Each day photos like this would turn up, asking
"Are my curves okay?"

Robert, your curves are great.


30s Argentian wrought iron chair, christmas lillies, one white brick, all on currents of brick swirl.

Fanning and swerving, placed as if a former dental technician had laid them.
As was the case.

A prize for the best caption for this photo of Robert, Rugsy the Norwegian Forest Cat, and the beer I told him was appropriate for brick layers.


About Robert
Robert is a vegetarian. For him carrots are something like water, I've never seen such capacity for eating carrots before. He likes to do things perfectly, and happily. When they are less than perfect in his eyes, he just pulls them out, says 'I'll try again', and does it over.
By day 7 he decided 'Cecilia, no more changes', and worked like a he was striking the fear of God into those bricks. Then he finished, and the beautiful smile, the joyful chuckling returned. He likes pink, likes flowers, and likes talking about his next girlfriend. Not his ex girlfriend, his Next Girlfriend - he met her on the internet, arranged for falling in love to happen while he was wwoofing down here in Australia, and will meet her in real in a few weeks.
I hope she adores him as much as we all do.

About bricks
This old dude, typical eccentric New Zealand style, spend a few decades of his life collecting discarded broken bricks, and layed them in these organic, flowing shapes, block after block till the whole street was awash with wild swirling bricks. It was the highlight of my visit to Christchurch a few years ago. By then the fashionable people had moved in, trying to borrow the eros, the vision that this old fellow had, energizing him every every day, never fading.

I caught it.
Here's the 'Before' photo of my back courtyard. The dinner table had just been brought sensibly back inside, leaving a chess game of extra-guest stools, on the seriously unimaginative, yet very nice bricks.
Why are bricks great? Well, unlike concrete, they let rain soak into the ground for the plants.
But the best reason is that you can haul them home, for free.
When I made the Elwood water catching Garden, I was left with a pile of lovely bricks nobody would buy, or even take for free. I drove around the neighbourhood looking for piles of bricks, and asking the rennovation gangs that put them there to if they would take my bricks off my hands. Instead, they tried persuading me to take their own expensive-to-dispose-of bricks off Their hands.

Just go for a cruise, get a big man with a van, and a swirly brick dream can be part of your life too.

Thank-you New Zealand for the inspiration, thank you Robert for the strong mind and spirit, and thank you Lon who's cooking kept Robert going. Thank you Graham the landlord, and Frank for the brick cutter.
Like raising a child, it takes a whole village to get your bricks swirly. But if the desire is strong enough, it happens.

persimmon balcony garden breakfasts

Ingrediants: organic oatmeal, crystal salt, pure cream, one syrupy persimmon. That's all.

Though its the crunchy, sweet persimmons I love best, last week's hoshigaki and this morning's oatmeal have changed my mind about planting an the astringent one - its utterly wonderful, and I will order one tomorrow.


When left long enough to be syrupy and sweet, the astringency disappears, and if you are lucky, so does the stringiness.

Department store persimmons - 10 of these, or buy a nice big tree.

Now I'm remembering, my first ever edible 'balcony' garden was a sweet persimmon tree. It came to the sunny second-floor north-facing window of the old wooden apartment I shared with Shu Inagaki, my first few years in Japan. We would eat together on the tatami, at the window, and I would just reach out to pluck my wonderful desert after each meal, eating without even peeling.
As the years go by, more and more objects and events become enchanted with echos of good times. So don't worry about getting old, just make sure you find many things to savor along the way. Life's pleasures intensify with each year's overlays of memories, a consoling thought.

Gothic balcony gardening photo shoot - looking for edible black plants

Rehearsing costume and light, ready for a Gothic Garden stage set to be assembled

What, I wondered, did young Urbanized Goths do in the day? Maybe what they need is a spot of Gothic balcony Permaculture to perk them up - black roses for turning into fragrant Jam, black snake beans to rip into, glossy eggplants, and then a good swathe of menacing thorny roses, blood red, clambering over the balustrades to keep out marauding possums.


Drawing in black just doesn't work for me. No worries, making a photo would be even more fun, I will meet creative people, and we might be able to have a Gothic feast afterwards.


Can you help me? Here is my beg, borrow, trade or buy wish list:
Black or purple Fruiting plants, full size, dug up:
Eggplant,
black beans,
Potted Avocado,
Pomegranate,
black-stemmed taro,
purple asparagus
blackberries (any left?)
Black, Dark red, dark purple flowering plants
Red flowering roses, thorny preferred.

Pots, to cover in shiny black plastic, and tied with white ribbon

Black pebbles (or somebody to buy them off me after the shoot, cheap)
or Lots of Dark fallen leaves, to cover the bricks,
or - your other good, mysterious idea

From the Gothic Gardening Website

Wrought iron gates, magnificent, to hide the reality of the walls
Black Umbrellas, to hide the rock edging, to give a bat-like menacing feel, or to hang like storm clouds above, for a nice touch of oppression.

Melbourne GPO awash in Umbrellas, by jikon
Other amazing umbrella art on diggphotos

If I'm lucky, a sea monster-like black air conditioning pipe might writhe though the lot.

Artistic and efficient volunteers to help get it all together would be angels (black).

For all your black gardening ideas and advice, there is a substantial and beautiful Gothic Gardening website to direct and inspire you with plant names and uses. If there is enough vivid green, and splashes of white and crimson, it could look captivating. Here is a list of black plants,
but I myself wouldn't like black leaves - too much like bin liners. Fruit is fine, because its glossy. Green emenates life.

Thank-you Amor e Locura for lending me the gorgeous gates