When Osamu Nakamura is not in the mountains of Nepal studying woodblock print making, he's almost always in the small farmhouse among the terraced rice fields in the interior of Shikoku that he calls home. He has no telephone, so if you want to visit, you have to stop by to see if he is in.
As I walk up the narrow footpath (his place is still inaccessible by car) I call out a greeting, and the shaven-headed gentleman with bushy black eyebrows slides back the shoji doors and invites me in for a cup of locally harvested tea.
As he makes a fire in the sunken pit in the middle of his floor, I look around at the meticulously stacked firewood, bamboo shelves, mud walls and, in the corner, a stone grinder for making flour from wheat berries.
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