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After many years of planning, the company I work for (somakosha) is finally building a timber frame in Okayama, Japan to be sent over to my local Zen temple in Honolulu. We’ll be working on it all summer, shipping it over and raising it the end of this year. Hopefully, this is the first of many, and the temple sent over some monks and priests to help work on the project. Likewise, some carpenters are planning on going to the temple to train in zen before hand. During my apprenticeship, I’ve been studying the relationship between the two cultures, joined through Buddhism. The first Sukiya carpenter I ever met, 10 years ago, yoshiaki nakamura, told me if you want to understand Japanese carpentry, you have to understand Buddhism. Here we are, today, connecting the two. Most dreams take awhile to unfold, I think.

Apo 50 sl and q3

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I’ve been working as an apprentice and journalist in Okayama at a firm called Somakosha for the last year. What I’ve been most interested in is how apprentices and experienced carpenters work together to transfer knowledge. Unlike some firms, sometimes advice is directly given through observation, rather than just stolen out of the corner of one’s eye. Here’s Jon Stollenmeyer one of the owners training an apprentice Shinya, how to cut in natural rounds for a fence. Shinya is the grandson of Yoshiaki Nakamura, a carpenter/architect who was Jon’s first boss in Kyoto at Sotoji Nakamura Komuten. The more complete books about Sotoji’s work go for about $1000 on eBay. It’s been a fun journey and I’m starting to publish photos and stories in a newsletter, and will probably get a photographic book out of it in the future. Hope you enjoy the photo.