Hello. Today is 23 July, the start of Taisho — the Great Heat.
It's hot. Just as you'd expect of the Great Heat.
And yet, around this time, I start to feel the wind of summer's end. Hot as it is.
A long time has passed since flow's newsletter Kakuuchi vol.2 went out.
What have I been doing, you ask? Weeding. Weeding the rice field.
This season, as before, I set to it believing that with effort I could keep the weeds down,
but I couldn't keep up at all.
Why? Because before the rainy season no rain fell, and the river ran dry.
Our field is fed by mountain water, so if it doesn't rain, we get no water.
A rice field without water is no different from a vegetable field.
Weeding endlessly, bent double, over nearly 2 tan (about 2,000 m²).
It was pretty hard, with no sense of reward — back-breaking work.
Bones didn't break, but my thighs swelled up, it spread to lower-back pain,
and I thought: right, this is impossible, and gave it up.
Now it's weeding when I get up, and weeding in the evening. By deciding that farm work gets at most three hours a day, I've started to find a good rhythm.
In the remaining time, Yu is making her work, and
trying new things such as the Atelier flow workshop "Painting with colours from stone" and an open studio.
Her monthly workshop at rokka/rova in Azusa, Maibara, thankfully keeps selling out.
I'm immersed in making things together with AI.
After Fable 5, it has taken me into areas I'd always wanted to try.
I can't bring myself to use any AI other than Claude Fable. (As of 23 July 2026.)
I also held an event on the theme of learning AI together, AI Terakoya -budding edge-. My first event in a long while.
When Fable hits its usage limit I stop working with AI,
and that's when I could get down to writing this newsletter using only my own head.
Kakuuchi is 100% organic. I write every single character myself.
Thanks to Fable's arrival, how to use social media has also become clear.
Since about last year I'd been wondering how to make use of it.
The social media posts are left to the AI writer; I'm the editor-in-chief. Something like that.
The original thinking is my own, stored in my second brain;
from that, the AI writer drafts, the editor revises, it drafts again from that, and finally I correct by hand and make the fair copy.
I tell it the date and time to post, and have the AI post on my behalf.
That's the kind of thing I'm doing.
In an hour or so I'll go out for the evening mowing.
A summer day on which I think: at the very least, let Kakuuchi go out at the turn of each solar term.
Hideo
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I'm on Substack
Do you know Substack?
It's a newsletter platform with social features.
It can read articles aloud like a podcast, so you can listen while doing something else — handy.
Unlike other social media, there are no ads, which is nice. With less of the attention-economy flavour, it has social elements but can be enjoyed by people tired of social media.
Join me if you like!
https://substack.com/@flowhideo
