Shibafu

So, you're probably wondering by now what's with the lawn? Well, you see, when I moved in my place needed a lot of cleaning. And then I realized outside my place also needed a lot of cleaning. The stairs were coated in leaves, bugs, and above all else - sand. It wasn't long after I cleaned it that I needed to clean it again. I was getting tired of sweeping up the sand and generally considered the front of the building to be terrible-looking. In front of the building was nothing but sand and weeds. I decided I wanted to put something done, even if not the whole thing, to prevent the sand. Not just my building, but all of Shimonoseki seems to have this neglectfulness about the land and plants, everything is weeds and sand. I decided I'd put down some grass.

I was unsure the landlord would be okay with me altering the property and there was a building meeting coming up, so I waited for that. I showed up late (the address was in kanji, I just figured the circled thing on the paper was the location of the meeting), but was able to interject during the "Anything else?" part at the end of the meeting. I struggled to explain in Japanese what I wanted to do. I learned an important word in the process:

芝生 (shibafu) - lawn

I went to the local hardware store and eventually decided on using sod instead of seed because seed requires both more effort and more skill (and some equipment). I also bought a bike (a rather flashy one, but I kind of felt bad having the clerk take it down from the shelf for me to look at), so I put the sod and dirt on the seat and walked it all home. The people are the store were pretty helpful and were probably a bit amused.

This is the result of laying down the bushel of grass I got. I definitely didn't seem like enough.

I went back and got more, this time carrying two bushels. I had a nice old lady try to help for like 20 minutes or so until we ended up doing exactly what I was going to do in the first place. Though at least I figured out I can get plastic rope stuff if I asked. The store people were somewhat amused to see I had come back to get more.

This seemed like a good place to stop, but I decided maybe a little further would look nicer.

At this point, I had spent a ton of time and effort. And watering was becoming a pain. I quickly decided that the other plots weren't getting any grass. Though at least they are coated in weeds so it didn't matter so much.

Eventually I decided it was worth bribing a friend into helping me. She had a car so we just loaded it with the remaining grass and dirt needed. We worked into the evening and finished up the lawn. Though we got a bit lazy, so there was quite a bit of rocks and weeds under the grass. Some old man tried explaining to me something presumably about the weeds, but in a difficult accent, so I didn't understand. He even seemed pretty mad.

The end farthest from my stairs was the worst part. The area by the pipe was actually almost all solid stone. The stone had been tunneled into by years of water. This area was also brimming with rocks. I decided not to try to wrap around the building or anything and make my lawn a rectangle.

To formalize my barrier, I added some bricks. I eventually relocated some of the grass at the ends and used up the extra two squares.

I also added seeds between the edges and throughout the lawn. I think they are the random extra tall blades that have been popping up, but the edges of every rectangle tended to do better already anyway. Which causes my lawn to retain lines of green which make it obvious it was patched together.

I actually got a lot of praise and encouragement from the other people in the building that walked by. I watered every evening, so a lot of the other teachers coming home would see my lawn. They were also at the meeting when I said I was going to grow a lawn, but I think most of them were surprised when I actually did. I even got visitors like this guy!

The gaps between the squares eventually started to fill, but the green lines between the spaces still remains.

Still, the lawn got greener and greener at time went on. The newer the grass though, the less green. So the initial grass, which was planted with a large gap between the next set was noticably greener, but everything except for a few squares started turning green. Hopefully the non-green squares heal.

I eventually added what I hope is fertilizer. I asked the store clerk if this was "lawn food" and she said yes, so it should be good at least. The picture is a bunch of grass, so it's probably right. Also it has a dog and a rainbow on it, so that's something.

Watering was a pain. I made many improvements to optimizing watering - leaving the door open, filling the tub and just dunking the can, using my old shoes like sandals, taking them off while facing backwards so I can just slip into them, and finally only yesterday I realized I could water three times as fast if I used a bucket to refill from downstairs. My life would have been so much easier if they hadn't removed the spigot over my lawn and paved over it. But now that it's November, I've stopped watering for the year. Hopefully my lawn makes it through the Winter.

Also, you can follow my lawn on twitter! https://twitter.com/CorbinsLawn