Nawa!

     I recently went on an overnight trip with Yuta to Ibaraki, just north of where we are now. Yuta's cousins had invited us to harvest rice in the traditional way and enjoy a local farmers festival on the river.  We had a blast and one of the things that I learned is how to use rice hay to make rope, which is called "Nawa".  I spent a few days playing around with the process and made quite a bit of rope (about 50 foot of it), none of which was strong enough to hold my weight, even when I doubled the rope.  Here is a picture of my Nawa:


     You can see the broken ends where I tested to see if it was strong enough to hold me.  I was very focused on the process and wanted to make sure that I remembered how to make nawa, so I spent a few days playing around with it.  Ryoko, observing me, decided to ask me to make an ornamental rope for the Shinto shrine in the house, which you can see below:

     I am accustomed to being able to make things with my hands.  I am a woodworker and general handyman as most of you know.  I took some time to study the fancy rope and tried to reverse engineer it so that I could make one.  After about an hour I realized that I had no idea what to do.  The rope in the shrine is beautiful, mine sloppy.  The level of workmanship in the shrine rope was way above anything that I could do at this point.  Ryoko told me that her father had made one, and it had taken him a full day or so.  I also learned that you can purchase them for not so many yen.  So I will not be making one, this is something better left to more adept craftsmen. I will be glad to teach anyone who asks, when back in the states, how to make crude rope. . .