Xmas work

Over the holidays, we had quite a few nice and sunny days. I went to the woods almost each of those days, but the working pace and duration differed a lot. Worst/shortest were the days when some neighbor also would show up and start burning stuff in their plot. The smoke does not go well with physically taxing work so I would start panting after maybe an hour and just have to give up and go home.
Anyway, what I did was I stacked all the bamboo in the middle of my plot so that later I could be able to fell sugi trees and also reach along the north wall with a hoe and dig without having to move the bamboo too much. I also cleared all the branches and extra big bamboos that were lying along the north, to avoid misunderstanding about where my plot begins. Some of the more heavy duty bamboos from there I moved all the way to the other plot and laid along its borders.

Taken from south west corner

Even though I haven't really started doing anything in that plot, it already looks much nicer with the borders.

And this is the south east corner looking north 

Back to the bamboo plot, I was ready to go up the north hill and chop down bamboos that look threatening. Which means pretty much all of them.

Bamboo plot. Taken from west side looking in to north

The bamboo plot is really starting to look clean. One sign that it can almost pass as workable land was when I met Mr. O and he asked me: "So, what are you gonna plant in your land?"

A bit closer. This is where I plan to dig and plant first 

Taken from east looking north

However, after a couple of days I started realizing what a tough tough task it is to clean the north plot of bamboos. First, my electric chainsaw is starting to act bad. The batteries only hold about half an hour of charge after charging for 2 hours. And it doesn't have the same power as before, plus its chain is starting to go dull. So each time I went with a "fully" charged chainsaw I could just cut down 10 bamboos and then have to do the rest by hand saw.
Second, the number of bamboos in that particular area is way more than I thought. And third, the bamboo that are standing are pretty old and thick and very hard to cut down by hand and very heavy to haul uphills afterward.
All of this made me adopt a new strategy/policy when it comes to the north neighbor.
What I have cut down so far is fine, I also spent one day to cut down all the younger bamboos there (i.e. thinner than ca. 15 cm) so that no more addition should happen. And every year I will keep cutting down the new shoots. The remaining old ones will eventually die and start falling one by one, which should be manageable. When they dry up and die, they are not as heavy, and if they fall one at at a time, the risk of them falling over to the south is low, and in those cases, risk of them hitting something is even lower. So whenever I find a fallen bamboo I will just return it to the north.

After cutting some of the bamboo 

Same thing, from farther away

The north neighboring plot is pretty much in the same messy state I found it. But now it doesn't lean over my plot as much, plus with my plan it should actually empty itself of bamboo and replace them with some other more bush like plants. And the new bamboos I hauled up and laid there recently should discourage the random bamboo shoot foragers who pop up there cause that area is pretty dangerous to walk in. It wasn't safe before neither but now it actually looks as dangerous as it was.