Karl and Tina: Village Life in the Deep Snow

A record snowfall blankets the traditional Japanese-style houses in Taketokoro in Niigata Prefecture.

This house, called Sokaku-an, was restored by a German architectural designer, Karl Bengs.

Karl lives here with his wife, Christina.

Inside, it's warm, even in winter.

Where did you find this?

Right nearby.
I got it and made the decoration.

Insect jumped out.

I made it for its apartment.

In this season, hemmed in by snow, they spend a lot more time inside.

Even so, winter has its charms.

If you open the window,
the nice cold air comes in.

It's beautiful, isn't it?
Like a painting.

Captivated by the traditional houses that Karl has renovated, the people who live in them enjoy the winter.

It feels very nice.

Okay. Good texture.

This woman has made "yubeshi," a sweet that requires exposure to the cold wind.

It's really delicious.

The children in the village romp around in the snow.

At the beginning of the year, the Fire Festival is held.

People pray for the safe unfolding of the new year.

Great sound.
That's a good sign.

And then comes spring.

The people in the village head off together in search of the flavors of the new season.

This can be eaten raw.
You haven't tried it yet, right?

Here.

It's exciting.
The snow melts and green appears.

From winter to spring, we followed the lives of the people in this miraculous village.

Taketokoro in Niigata Prefecture is in an area that has some of the heaviest snowfalls in the world.

This is a morning in January.

After falling for several days in a row, the snow has finally let up.

The residents face a constant battle against the snow.

Karl, good morning.
It's really snowed a lot this year.

This is my first time.

I've never seen four meters
pile up in one week.

Four meters in a year
isn't unusual.

The old-timers say
it's the first in 35 years.

The snow clogged this up
so the floor heating didn't work well.

In the kitchen, Tina's making something.

Stew. Country stew.

Long cooking, but very delicious.

It's chicken stew.

Cumin, turmeric, paprika.

And garlic.

This is a Japanese citrus powder.
It's so good.

Yuzu.

Finally.

Taste nice, delicious.

Tina's mother was of Italian descent.

Tina freely adds Japanese ingredients to recipes handed down from her mother.

It's a chicken and tomato stew with plenty of spices.

Cheers.

It has cumin in it.

As always, it's delicious.

My mother used to cook this.

My mother used to cook very nice Italian dishes.

She was a great cook.

It's good because it's warm.

Especially the soup when it's very hot. Then it's OK.

Karl's greatest pleasure in the winter is snowshoeing through the fresh snow.

Ah, my back hurts.

He heads into the woods, where the snow shows no sign of footprints.

The best thing is when I'm walking alone.
I like walking and thinking.

I have nothing planned out,
so I just try to clear my head.

This is a cherry tree.

It's about three meters tall.

- "So it snowed three meters?"
- That's right.

It feels good.

A bird is chirping a little.

Very nice.

It's quiet here but not lonely at all.

Karl says that the scenery in Taketokoro makes him appreciate the unique beauty of the snowy mountains in Japan.

My hometown, Berlin,
has no mountains.

Japan has such gentle scenery,
with snow and mountains.

It's really beautiful.

It's hard to find such wonderful scenery
anywhere else in the world.

Karl has led a quiet life in Taketokoro ever since moving here in his 50s.

But the first half of his life was tough.

Karl was born in Berlin in 1942.

His father had been killed fighting in World War II two months earlier.

When he was 19, the Cold War between the East and the West intensified.

Just before the Berlin Wall was built, Karl managed to swim across the river from East Berlin and make a narrow escape to the West.

It was a really tough situation.
I risked my life for freedom.

My motivation for escaping was
that I didn't want to be conscripted.

My grandfather and father were
both killed in wars.

I never wanted to die in a war.

By going from the East to the West,
I wouldn't be drafted.

There was no conscription
in the West.

My mother and sisters
were stuck in the East.

I couldn't see them for decades.

Karl was interested in Japanese culture, and came to Japan for the first time when he was 24.

He was fascinated by Japan's traditional wooden buildings.

He started a business using Japanese-style architectural techniques in Germany, and traveled back and forth between Germany and Japan.

When he was in his 50s, he began looking for a place to live after he retired.

He came upon present-day Sokaku-an by chance.

First, he dismantled the run-down house.

He then rebuilt it into a modern one, keeping the original post and beam framework.

Karl intended Sokaku-an to be the last home he and Tina would live in.

He built a study for her in the attic.

What are you doing?

Now? Editing some photographs.

She's arranging some photographs
she took in the summer.

I like the flowers of my garden.

The snow is melting, the snow is going away.

I prepare my garden.

I love my garden.

What's that yellow decoration on the window?

This decoration I made is the sun.

You mean this one?

For me, it's the sunshine.

Very comfortable.

It's very nice. I like it.

This is Tina's haven as she looks forward to the springtime sun.

Karl has renovated nine Japanese-style houses in Taketokoro.

They have attracted new residents to the village, which was rapidly becoming depopulated.

The deep red walls of this house stand out in the white snow.

It's known as the Rouge House.

Good morning.

Kanai Fusa moved here from Tokyo.

She bought this house ten years ago.

This is the first time she's experienced such a heavy snowfall.

Don't you think this looks fun?

It's really fun.

Snow is great.
It falls in completely different ways.

- "It changes every day?"
- Every day it's totally different.

One day it's fine powder snow.

Or huge snowflakes.
Or it dances around with the wind.

I don't know
how many types there are.

Every day it's very different.

In Tokyo, Kanai owned a company that edited books and magazines.

She worked without rest.

When she turned 70, she put a period on her work in the city.

She decided to move to the countryside.

There are two big walnut trees
near my house.

The walnuts fall in the autumn.

Squirrels come out
to the road to eat them.

Nobody bothers to pick them up.
But I find it delightful.

I can gather my fill of these luxurious
goodies right outside my house.

It's awesome.

I'm making walnut cookies today.

- "Do you often make sweets?"
- Yes, I do.

There's no sweets shop nearby
so I have to make them.

I thought I'd be bored in the country,
but I'm always busy.

I spend all day here in the kitchen.

I made this cookie board myself.

- "You made it?"
- Yes.

The cookies will be 5 mm thick.

This is 5 mm.

They'll naturally turn out 5 mm thick.

They're going to be pretty delicious.

All done.

Mmm, crispy.

They turned out well.
They're good.

Her favorite time is when she takes a moment to look out the window at the snowy landscape.

I'm in amazing shape.
Emotionally.

I become calm.

I feel a warmth
when I look at the snow.

I don't feel cold.

It's quiet and warming.

Kanai takes photographs of scenes she discovers and sends them to friends in Tokyo.

Each day I feel animated, excited.

There's never a day when I feel,
"It's snowing again."

Maybe I'm a child of nature.

This winter, the heavy snow continues.

Over the last three days, more than 70 centimeters has fallen.

The temperature has dropped to minus eight degrees Celsius.

Hello.

The front door is frozen shut.

An elderly man in his 80s lives here alone.

I'll bring some hot water.

Good morning.

The door was frozen.

I just opened it.

It's really cold today.

- One degree this morning.
- It's minus eight outside.

Igarashi Tomio is a long-time resident of Taketokoro.

On days when it snows, he gets up at 4:00 in the morning.

He goes around the village to deal with the snow for two hours twice a day.

This continuous management of the snow supports winter life in Taketokoro.

Igarashi's family has lived in this area for generations.

He says that since Karl arrived, the atmosphere in the village has changed a lot.

During the winter, everyone
in the village hated the snow.

But then Karl came.
He loves the snow.

He says it's the most beautiful.

The people in the village
began to feel the same way.

We'd never noticed that before.

In our village, old farm equipment,
broken-down tractors were abandoned.

Karl and other new residents said
all that junk looked bad.

We spent 10 years cleaning it up.

It was Karl who made us
realize the village's potential.

After Karl came, we began to feel that
we should value the village more.

Shige, Igarashi's wife, says that in her exchanges with newly arrived residents, she's rediscovered what's good about Taketokoro.

These are artworks Shige made using pressed flowers.

She learned this method from a woman who had come to live in the village.

The materials she used were all flowers and leaves she gathered in Taketokoro.

I got more interested in wildflowers
and felt they were really beautiful.

My wife showed me flowers
I hadn't noticed before.

That surprised me,
but I also found it fun.

The kids joyfully rolling around in the snow are Onozuka Miya and Yura, who moved here with their parents seven years ago.

A fire festival called "Sai no Kami" is held in early January.

Villagers raise effigy-like piles of straw made from plants harvested in the fall.

It's nearby, isn't it?

Miya and Yura are offering the New Year's calligraphy they've made.

They light the fire, praying for an abundant harvest and protection from illness and disaster.

Great sound.
That's a good sign.

Fantastic.

Starting in mid-April, the village is filled with the sound of rushing water from the melting snow.

Japanese butterbur and liverleaf flowers bloom along the banks of the streams, signaling the start of spring.

That one there is the cherry tree.

It's just peeked out
about this much.

The snow was actually piled up
about three meters high.

This cherry tree stands on the outskirts of the village.

In the winter, only the top was visible.

The rest was buried in snow.

Although the branches were broken off by the weight of the snow, shoots are sprouting out from the trunk.

It's not dead.
These are sprouting out this far.

It's May and Sokaku-an is enveloped in greenery.

Tina's been waiting for this season when she can work in her garden.

This is lovely.

This is a lovely flower for summer, for all the summer.

The blue salvia is one flower she plants each year without fail.

The flowers are so beautiful.

So nice color.

Whenever I get a little bit tired, I sit here and then I look at my garden.

I watch everything, and I didn't get tired of watching this.

I watch it every day.

I like to work in my garden, but I like to leave it wild.

I mean why bad trim?

It doesn't take too much, only to leave it and try to fix it and try to take out.

It's important and leave the other plants to going nature wild.

That's what I like.

Oh, this is it.
Leaf, leaf, leaf.

Tea time features herbs from her garden.

The lemon balm.

It's delicious.

When spring comes, Karl and Tina enjoy spending lots of time in their garden.

At the Rouge House, the thyme planted on the south slope is in full bloom.

Kanai is going to make a box lunch for a mountain picnic with the other women in the village.

She'll wrap sticky steamed rice in magnolia leaves she picked near her house.

The deliciousness of the rice is enhanced by the fragrance of the leaf.

Like this, and this...

It's cute, isn't it?

The fragrance is one thing.

And then in the past they didn't
have many containers.

They could just use these leaves
and throw them away.

Easy to carry, and no need
to clean up later.

Kanai joins the others.

First, they'll go to pick wild mountain plants.

Those are good butterburs.

We can find them everywhere.

Even along my rice field.
Lots and lots.

Some of these ladies are 90 or older and know where to find the best mountain vegetables.

Is this one OK?

That one is better.

Ones that long are still tender.
They're delicious.

These are Solomon's seal shoots.

They're slightly sweet and taste like asparagus.

Oh, it smells lovely.

They say that spring plants are abundant after a particularly snowy winter.

You gather them up in a bunch.

You snap off maybe 10 leaves at a time.

It's a great tip.

That's how we always do it.

"You're doing it her way."

Yes, gather them first like this...

and then cut off the leaves.

I learned something new.

After gathering plants, this is what they've been looking forward to - lunch time in the mountains.

They've all brought their own specialties.

These are simmered wild vegetables
including bamboo shoots.

The udo in the mountains grew too big.

These are good ones from
next to my rice paddies.

I flavored them with sesame miso.
It's good.

- It all looks delicious.
- Eat up.

- It's so good.
- Is it? How's it cooked?

Just right.

After an especially snowy winter, they're finally able to enjoy the springtime.

You feel so wonderful.

It's exciting.
The snow melts and green appears.

She says her legs hurt
during the winter and she's not able
to join us in the spring.

But she's training at home.

I exercise in bed before getting up.

I'm 91, but I can still do this.

Soon, I'll go to the other side.

But she's reenergized in the spring,
and she can't just stay home.

This spring, Karl started renovating another traditional house.

The client wants to relocate from Tokyo.

The posts and beams come from a house that's over 100 years old in a neighboring town.

On this day they're undertaking what's called a trial fitting.

In order to get the correct measurements, they temporarily put together the framework of the disassembled old house.

For an ordinary house, you draw the plans
and then prepare the materials accordingly.

But we do the opposite.

We measure the old materials accurately,
then draw the plans.

In a traditional house, the crooked or bent wooden posts and beams are used as they are.

In the past, making the posts straight
was a painstaking process.

That's why crooked posts were used.

But the arch is structurally strong.

Even with heavy snowfall,
they won't bend.

Carpenters in the past very skillfully assembled the crooked wooden elements, and built strong buildings that could withstand the weight of the snow.

Karl says that he's always impressed by that wisdom and technique.

The owner of the house came to see it after the trial fitting.

You can see how it will look.
It's amazing.

Katayama Akiko runs a company in Tokyo.

After retiring, she wants to live the next stage of her life in Taketokoro.

This is a good post.

It's zelkova.
Very precious.

They say that
a wooden house breathes.

I think I'll really feel that
when I live here.

I live alone, but I don't think
I'll get lonely living in this house.

We get lonely in
concrete high-rises in the city.

You won't.

You hear birds in the morning.
There's the bulldozer in the winter.

Bulldozers in the winter?

Katayama was born and raised in Tokyo.

She's now living in an apartment.

She feels that she can meet the challenges of living in the country in one of Karl's renovated houses.

My parents are gone. No husband.
My daughter is off on her own.

When I was young,
I faced many limitations.

Now I can live freely.

I made a snap decision.

I want to enjoy lots of different things
here in this new environment.

Her house is scheduled to be completed in about a year.

The area where Taketokoro is located is known for the beauty of its rice terraces spreading out over the rough terrain.

Filled with abundant snowmelt water, the rice terraces reflect the sky and surrounding scenery.

It's a Sunday in June.

A picnic day that village residents have been looking forward to.

Katayama introduces herself to her future neighbors.

My house will be finished
this time next year.

I'm Katayama Akiko.

Every year when the rice planting is finished, all the residents head together into the mountains.

They gather wild vegetables for tempura and eat them outside.

Even though it's June, there's still some snow in the mountains.

How do we go from here?

Walk along the right side.

That's good.

That's for tempura.

This can be eaten raw.
You haven't tried it yet, right?

Meanwhile, the children...

It's so cool in here.

It's frozen.
A natural refrigerator.

A refrigerator in the great outdoors.

They would rather play in the water than gather vegetables.

This is fun.

After the wild plants have been gathered, everyone heads to a patch of lawn in the village.

At Karl's bidding, all the residents pitch in to help maintain it.

They fry up the wild plants they've collected.

Altogether, there are 12 varieties.

Katayama already seems to feel at home.

One afternoon after the rain.

The trees are becoming greener and thicker with each rainfall.

What's on Tina's menu for today?

It's very delicious. As used in Germany.

She's making a salmon dish.

Sesame oil.

I discovered this.

It's so delicious.

So at least something Japanese. At least a little bit.

Tasty.

So good.

So now the next step.

I hope this is OK.

I hope, I hope...

Beautiful.

It's beautiful.

Lovely.

Colorful and very tasty.

The combination is good.

With avocado and salmon.

It's very fresh and delicious.

It tastes great.

The two of them often go to a beautiful spot.

Look at the color there. It's beautiful.

The view from here is so lovely.

Such a nice air, fresh and clean air.

It's a very calming place.

What's sad is that there are fewer and
fewer people farming the rice fields.

You see more fields being neglected.

Once a field becomes disused,
it's very hard to restore.

Still, the scenery here is very beautiful.

It's quiet, only the birds.

Since traditional houses were created
in the midst of nature, the best thing is to leave them
as much as possible in nature.

You're number one.

A visionary man.

He does the right thing, most beautiful.

She doesn't praise me very often.

This is Taketokoro, enveloped by lush nature.

Day by day, its greenery will grow more and more abundant.