Recycled whirligigs remain a fixture in the Japanese countryside
The World
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Gardeners know that there are all kinds of DIY options for defending the vegetables or fruit growing in outdoor gardens from would-be predators.
Tactics can be as simple as placing an empty tin can or rattling on the end of a stick that’s stuck between rows of plants, or maybe something a bit more elaborate: a homemade pinwheel that spins in the wind and makes whirling sounds to scare away hungry birds.
This is from a recent video in rural Japan by National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek. The World has been checking in with Salopek periodically as he traces the path of human migration. He’s documenting it all along the way, in a project known as Out of Eden Walk.
Carolyn Beeler: So, describe what we’re talking about here. These things I think are called, by some people, whirligigs. They look kind of like pinwheels.
Paul Salopek: Yeah, that’s exactly what they are … pinwheel, whirligig. They’re about, I don’t know, six inches across. They are made out of old plastic water bottles. Japanese farmers and gardeners cut them in very artful ways to peel back parts of the plastic to turn them into these spinning devices, and then fix them on a bamboo pole or kind of an iron rod and plant them around their gardens. And sometimes they paint them. So, here I am walking across rural Japan. Rural Japan, as we’ve discussed before, is in some places quite lonely. It’s been depopulated. So, this is sometimes the only thing that’s moving in the entire landscape, these little whirligigs, these pinwheels.
So, I assumed, as I think you did, that they scare away animals by sound, but a gardener that you met when you were walking set you straight.
Yeah, I did too. I thought these were kind of just spinning scarecrows, right? You know, some flashing light, some light off the plastic. But as it turns out, she explained to me that, no, they actually send vibrations down through the pole into the soil. And these vibrations travel across the ground. It kind of sends out little mini earthquakes, which is appropriate because Japan is the land of earthquakes.
So, which critters are people in rural Japan trying to scare away?
I asked this, and apparently, this is kind of an all-purpose quaking, spinning scarecrow. This thing can just scare away foxes that might come in after melons. It scares away things that burrow into the ground, moles, you know, mice. One farmer even claims that it scares away bears, which is a bit hard to imagine. But yeah.
Did you find it significant that these are all made from recycled bottles and other recycled objects?
It fits right in with the aesthetic of modern Japan. So, you’d have this ancient thousand-year-old tradition of how to design a Zen garden, now coupled with recycling and sustainability. Japan is super zealous about recycling. In fact, one of the interesting things about walking through Japan is that if you buy a bottle of water or a snack and a wrapper at a convenience store or a supermarket, I have to end up carrying it almost to the end of the day because there are no garbage cans, because all of this stuff that gets recycled and everybody’s responsible for their own rubbish. There are no public rubbish bins. So, it goes in my backpack, and I carry my garbage for 25 kilometers (about 15 miles), until I check into a guest house. So, it fits [in with] this sustainable handmade element of these whirligigs, very much of the place.
Those houses that you were passing, many of which were abandoned, you say, were they of a particular style?
They seem to have kind of stopped in time, like in the ’80s. This architectural style, it’s distinctive of Japan. There’s a lot of wood housing in Japan. It goes back centuries of tradition. It stands out to earthquakes better, right? But you know, they’re kind of modern homes. They’re not like super traditional. Some of them have tile roofs. They’re elegant and they look like a Mondrian painting, you know, kind of rectilinear, kind of big windows and verticals, horizontals. But most of them [had] the curtains drawn and [were] kind of quiet and empty.
So, let’s fast forward to present day. Right now, you’re on a cargo ship heading for North America to begin your North American leg of the walking journey. Can you tell me about the ship and what it’s like being a passenger on a cargo ship?
Yeah, I’ll try. It’s strange. I’ve got to say, this is a 300-meter-long (nealry 1,000 feet) container ship, Singapore-flagged, owned by a Danish company. The crew is international. This humongous floating warehouse, basically, is steaming across the North Pacific. As I speak, I can feel its vibration up through the chair. I’m sitting in a cabin at about 15 miles an hour and headed for a port in Canada. This thing can carry 100,000 tons of cargo. It’s hard to imagine. I think the average semi-tractor trailer carries 40 [tons], so do the math. And yeah, it’s kind of astonishing. I’m here kind of agog. One of the biggest things, I’ll say, is time. We’ve gone through time zones every, say, 30 to 35 hours, and I don’t know what time zone I’m in, Carolyn. I have no idea. Maybe the time zone of Jupiter or Mars.
There’s usually an official ship time, right, and that’s what everyone goes by?
It is, but you kind of catnap or try to catch some sleep when light is coming through the porthole, 20 hours a day, and the clock is different. And so, it’s changed by computer, and you don’t notice it. So yeah, it’s a bit strange.
So, are there berths that often take passengers on cargo ships, or is this some sort of special arrangement you’ve made?
No, this was something that I had to work on. The logistics were complicated because these vessels do not take passengers. You know, it’s kind of a working space, kind of an industrial space. So, they’re a little wary of taking on people. It took months and months to set this up. I had to get an able-bodied Siemens medical exam to have an able-bodied Siemens card, get some insurance. Yeah. But it’s worth it. I mean, the imagery. I’m taking video, I’m shooting photos as well as writing, it’s extraordinary. This place is hallucinatory. It’s like a film set … bright oranges, bright reds, men in sky blue uniforms. It’s pretty dramatic with these broad naked horizons that just don’t change, yeah.
So, I’m looking at a map. I’m assuming you’re steaming east from Japan, and you said you land somewhere in Canada.
Yeah, I land in Prince Rupert, Canada. It’s the very northern tip of British Columbia next to Alaska. And I’ll be starting the walk in Alaska in a few weeks. Heading south for about 10,000 kilometers to Tierra de Fuego, [the] tip of South America.
So, it has to be quite the change. You’re used to walking many, many miles a day. Now, you are not walking. You are stationary for about 12 days, although, of course, the ship is moving. How does that difference feel?
I am trying to walk around the ship. I calculated that if I kind of walk around the perimeter of the deck eight times, that’s a 5-kilometer (3 miles) walk. It’s such a gigantic ship, but I can’t jog, it’s not safe. So yeah, I’m kind of moving my feet in my chair as I speak.
Parts of this interview have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the “Out of Eden Walk.” The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonders of our world, has funded Salopek and the project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow the journey on X at @PaulSalopek, @outofedenwalk and also at @InsideNatGeo.
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