Our first WWOOF experience in Japan

I have been experiencing something between writer's burn-out and writer's block. However, I have been writing and I have managed to knock out the first 3 days of my trip in detail in a separate blog/book that I will make public soon.


Believe it or not, I am in Japan with Zoe High. We have actually been here almost 2 weeks and I have written nothing of it. Right now I am typing at the dining room table of our host, Akio. We are on a WWOOF farm in Azumino, Nagano Prefecture.


We spent about ten days with our friend Josh in Tokyo and had a really good time. Mostly we slept a ton, at lots of amazing Japanese food, and saw a lot of sights not mentioned in our Lonely Planet Japan book that Josh showed us. We also got lost a lot. The respect for the environment is a relief. There are temples, shrines, and potted plants squeezed in every crevice.


We left Tokyo on a bus, then took a train, and then Aiko picked us up. He drove us about fifteen minutes to th farm where we were shown our room and then fed dinner. The food is amazing, and that is an understatement. Grandma cooks just about every meal but she will trade off sometimes with other members of the family. Also there is an Onsen, or hot spring on the mountain over looking us, it is a 15 minute walk away....

This is where we are staying (second floor):

Our room, which is awesome, minus that Zoe is allergic to it -but last night wasn't too bad.

This is where the family lives and where we all eat.

This is the farm across the street:

Culture shock once again. Aiko made us print out our WWOOF IDs and then he copied down our passports. I think this is the only country that will even check that you are part of WWOOF. We also went around the table and introduced ourselves: name, country of orgin (either Japan or the States), age, and reason why we liked this farm.


The second night was even crazier. One of the farm hands brought out a handmade book that I am guessing she made. She read it like you read a calander that you nail to your wall. The side of the book facing us was watercolor paintings to illustrate what she read on the other side.


Our story began with instructions. No clapping. "Shining." Or waving your hands. There was a lot of "yaying" with it too. She began reading and smiling a lot. The story began. I had some of it translated for me later so I could understand it. Here is what I got:


"Once there was red apple traveling the universe. Red apple was very compelled to befriend all the other apples of all the other apples in the universe. When red apple was happy his energy went forth into the universe and made the other apples happy. One day red apple met blue apple and fell in love...."


And that was all they were able to translate. There was lots of "shining" and "yaying" at the end too.


We have began work. It is pretty easy. We were very confused at first when we were told we were picking apples since they are not in season. Well we are picking apples, little apples. We are picking off all the apples so there is one spaced every 15cm or so on the branch. It is a lot of work and I am still debating if it is worth our effort. I won't ask questions though, it is easy and pretty boring. Planting rice is next which is probably hard work.


Friends already! This is at tea break:

Hard at work:

Setting up dinner after we got back.

Back to the food. It is amazing. We have yet to have a meal repeat. We are eating really traditional Japanese food. I can't even name what we are eating. Tonight we had an omlet stuffed with potato and mushrooms with BBQ sauce on it. For lunch we had some potato curry thing. Mushroom or meso soup goes with every meal and usally some chopped up green vegetables.


We are already used to the (strict) schedual here.


6:40 Breakfast
7:15-8:00 House keeping
8:00-12:00 Morning work with a tea break @ 10
12:00 Lunch
1:30-3:30 Afternoon work
6:00 Dinner


I have to say it is a lot more than 6 hours of work a day. We have to do dishes after every meal plus house keeping. So it really is about 7 or 8 hours a day depending on what's happening. We don't mind too much but the host definitely has it good. Today I scrubbed their tub and felt like Chihiro from Spirited. I feel a little at their mercy since they can definitely kick us out, but so far they are really nice (I wonder why?)

Nice to meet you Beijing

Beijing is hard to sum up. It is a lot of different things in one. To begin with, it's the seat of the communist party, host of the 2008 Olympics, and a lot of concrete, and has a surprising lack of old things for the world's oldest country. Actually, it is not that surprising.


We rode in on the overnight train, exhausted from sitting in a chair for 15 hours straight. We tried to get a bus, or the subway, but eventually gave up and got a taxi. We seemed to cross town, eventually reaching a middle school where our next host worked and lived near by. We stood on the curb, both of us thinking the same thought: What now? Do we go in? (The school our host works at below):

Our answer came quickly. A man burst out the front door wearing black and yellow Ray-Bans, a button-down shirt, and black jeans if I remember correctly. He was accompanied by about fifteen or twenty sixth-graders. He yelled: "Hey! Couch surfers! Come over here; we're going to light stuff on fire!"


I think that is all you really need to know to understand our latest host. He was doing a lab with the students on the conservation of matter which included arming them all with magnifying glasses and lighting the lawn on fire, or at least getting it to smoke.


Our host is AWESOME. He has an apartment paid for by the school on the tenth floor of a building nearby. Basically, it is all ours because he spends the majority of his time at his girlfriend's place. He is also a great guide and good at explaining China. Just understanding this country for yourself is hard, let alone explaining it to others.


There have been many highlights of our stay in this city. I think we like it even more than Hong Kong. Hong Kong definitely has more "soul" to it, but Beijing has a great art scene with an undeniable bit of culture as well. The unfortunate thing about Beijing is there is basically nothing old in this city, everything has such a short life. Take the Man's Pants building (a.k.a. the China Center Television Headquarters,) for example. Our host explained that the burnt out building next to it (which is being quickly rebuilt as I type,) was an illegal fireworks factory that caught fire. This illustrates perfectly how polarized China is; everything is either new and shiny or burnt out.


Some of the streets seem like Vegas: wide, lit up, loud, and flashy. Even random roads or shopping districts follow in this suit.

We also had a good run-in with touts in the real markets. These markets sold all the traditional Chinese stuff like mahjong, fat Buddhas, and tea. The also sold eccentric "traditional" Chinese food, like scorpions or cockroaches on a stick. I question how traditional it is because when a tourist picks up one of these insects, all the locals stop and watch to see if they will go through with it.

We made it to the 798 art zone too. It is fairly mainstream now, but still critical of the government. Since it pulls so much tourism they look the other way. Of course the founder is in prison right now, but he managed to start another art center outside of Beijing before the government nabbed him.

There must be at least over 100 studios in that area and I think we only visited a third of them. One of our favorite exhibits was called "Only Her Body", which, big surprise (sarcasm,) was a metaphor for human destruction of mother earth. But I do have to say the style was very cool. It was all paint but done in a way to look like it was made of only neon lighting. 

We also went to this exhibit, which was in the same building but had a metaphor that was a little less obvious. It was critical of the government, no doubt.

Here are some other places in the 798 art district we saw.

The 2008 Olympic games certainly changed everything for Beijing. It really sped the process here of destroying the old and building the new. There has been a MASSIVE cultural loss here in the last 75 years or so due to several issues. 


We went to see the Olympic stadiums expecting to see other American or European tourists there. We did not see either, instead it was all Chinese tourists. This is because up until recently the Chinese were not allowed to leave their state, let alone their country. Also, I am sure there is a lot of iconic pride in the Water Cube and Birds Nest, so it is an attractive destination. It was windy too! (notice Mickey Mouse in the last photo!)

Changsha Chaos

One day in Changsha we were downtown getting Zoe a haircut. There was a salon about a five minute walk off the main road and decided we might as well go for it. When I first walked inside and the eight or nine male hair dressers saw my curly hair they got very excited but then I pointed to Zoe who had something even better: blonde hair.


They moved Zoe to the back so quickly I did not even notice when she left my side. They took my bag and locked it in a box and then sat me down at one of four computers in the waiting area. At each of the six or so haircutting stations there was a different movie playing for the customers to watch something during their "boring haircut."


After about ten or fifteen minutes or so I began to wonder where Zoe had gone off to. Surely someone could not wash someone's hair for ten or fifteen minutes? I made my way to the back room where I found Zoe lying down getting her hair washed by a man chattering away in Chinese. When Zoe looked up at me she said, "I don't understand!?!?" in that sort of fashion. Aparently the man talked to her the entire time even though she did not respond.


About another five minutes later she emmerged from getting her hair washed and a different man began cutting her hair right away. It did not take long as it was just a trim but the results were amazing. It was obvious that Zoe felt so much better too. It was crazy because the whole thing took about 40 minutes and it cost 39 Yaun or about $6.

Afterwards we went to a movie. It was the first movie we have seen on this trip. We saw "Sucker Punch" in IMAX, which cost the same as in the States, sad. We were two out of four people watching the movie, probably because it was in English. Also, it was SO hot in that theater, mid-90's at least. We sat and sweated. The movie was goofy; each time I am reintroduced back to American culture is seems crazier and crazier.


After the movie Lanny called us and said there was a police officer waiting at the house to question us, so we hurried back. We were both more confused than nervous. As far as Changsha went we were following all the rules nobody follows.


In fact, the day before we went on a wild goose chase all over the city to four different police stations and a public security office to get registered. That was probably one of the worst days on the trip. While it was possible to get a visa extension, which was our original goal, it no longer seemed worth it. We would have to prove that we had three grand either by bringing it in or bringing a statement letter and all the traveling rules would get tighter and tighter. Registering at a police station within 24 hours becomes very serious.


Lanny had our story straighter than we had it ourselves. So while the police officer waited for us to return, I thought she must be filling him in exactly on what dates we arrived, which based upon when we registered rather than when we actually got there.


When we arrived at the apartment, the police man was talking to Lanny and showing her pictures of his vacation in Tongdao. Suddenly I knew things were going to be fine. He immediately began talking to us and the first thing he said was: "What is your SAT score?"


Now Lanny was actually translating what he said, but he could speak a couple of English words and he used them. We communicated that we were freshmen, or going to be I hope, and accepted to college. He told us that his son was in the midst of the college application process, which, if you're in China, is complete hell compared to in the states. His son had applied to a lot of Ivy League schools as I understood it and had not done so well so far. In Asia it really is you either go to a school in the top 10 or you don't go anywhere.


What I did really approve of was how much the father wanted his son to study abroad. He put Zoe on the phone with his son pretty quickly and they talked for about 2 hours while I talked with the father. He finally asked us when we were leaving; we replied tomorrow in the evening. He invited us to dinner, then offered to drop us off at the train station afterwards, which seemed awesome, but we didn't really believe it. We did not agree on a set time.


The following day we were out again and heard nothing from the policeman. We assumed nothing was going to happen. Then, once again, while we were downtown we got a call from Lanny saying that the policeman was here to pick us up and go to dinner. Whoops! We ran back and got moderately ripped off by a taxi driver, but hey, we got there. After a lot of confusion we finally located Lanny, the policeman, and his entire family.


He drove us to Lanny's house, where we grabbed our stuff, and then took us to a fancy restaurant where we joined three of his guy friends for the nicest dinner I have had on this trip so far. We got a private room and were immediately handed menus and told to order whatever we wanted. They started ordering the most expensive items: entire duck, fish, and "nature items," as the son put it. I almost ordered "innereds." Zoe and I were desperately looking for something mostly vegetable.


Left to right: the policeman's wife, Lanny, the policeman's son (Xiaoxiao,) Zoe, and me.

Dish after dish after dish arrived and was set on the giant revolving table. I sat next to the policeman, who, by the way, was extremely friendly if you have not picked up on that already. As the table turned and all the foods went by, the policeman kept putting stuff on my plate that I could not identify but obediently ate and enjoyed. The son talked almost the entire time about his experience in school and his choices with colleges. It was very interesting to hear, but mostly I am glad I was not born in China! Although I am sure they would say they are glad they weren't born in the US.


Afterwards, they dropped us off at the train station about 20 minutes away. The father put on his police uniform, took us all the way to the train, and waited 20 minutes until it left. We chatted with the son for the last few minutes, said our goodbyes, and boarded the train.


What was really strange about this experience is that culturally, the Chinese (and this is from what the son was telling us) are really in predestination stuff. The father was so happy that we registered at the police station because our names came up on a list of an area he was patrolling, and he took the initiative to meet us. He said most Chinese families would do this too, which I found strange but I definitely believe.


So whether we believe in predestination or not, we ran into this family. We will probably cross paths with the son again hopefully, if he goes to school in New England or just visits us. He is certainly welcome to stay with us. The policeman made it clear that they would show us around the next time we came to China. Due to policy, we cannot stay with them because of the father and mother being police officers, but they really want us to come back. I hope we can.

Tongdao

I now sit at a wooden desk in a city called Changsha (China).  The best place to begin is leaving Yangshuo.


We took three buses and a taxi to get from Yangshuo to Tongdao. The journey was hectic but somehow functional and somewhat efficient. Our lack in ability to speak Chinese became an issue, but like always we got by. There were only a few moments when it seemed impossible to communicate, but after consulting over the phone with Lanny who would be our next host things worked out. Lanny even called our bus driver and talked to a ticket sales man over the phone. How does one get the tellephone number of a bus driver?


The final leg of the trip was a 30-minute bus ride down a bumpy, washed-out road. It wove back and forth along the side of a super highway which was under contstruction. The staight, geometric, mechanized highway mercilessly sliced through the organic, rolling, untouched countryside.


The bus driver knew where we were going, so when our stop came, he told us to get off. As the bus pulled away we found ourselves standing with five bags on the side of a t-intersection mud road. Two eight-year-old boys were peeing on a fruit tree together across the street. Farmland resting in neat terraces and ponds stretched in all directions except for the massive bridge for the superhighway to our backs. To our left was a small goods shop and behind that was a loud, gigantic cement factory supplying the construction.

About five adults hanging out in the goods shop were staring at us - nothing unusual. Many full mack trucks and cement mixers got uncomfortably close as they tumbled down the squishy, unsupportive street. We stood around for about fifteen minutes. Chickens pecked around and children would yell "Hi!" and then hide as quickly as possible. We were closely being watched; what strange things are the westerners going to do?!


Just as we began to reach for the phone to call Lanny for the seventh time that day, two motorcycles showed up. One bike was driven by a middle age man, and the other by a man maybe ten years younger. A young women was on the back of one and a child on the other. The young woman introduced herself as Lanny.


Zoe and I each got onto a bike so that there were three people on each. We both sat on the back which was a steel rack meant for luggage, it was a bit uncomfortable. For both of us it was our first time on a motorcycle and it went well minus the 15 kilo bag. Neiter of us fell off.


After a hundred meters or so the bikes jumped onto a narrow, smooth paved road that wove organically tracing the foot of each hill. A massive valley opened up and we passed four or five villages. While trying not to fall off, I looked behind us several times to see if Zoe was still on the bike. Unfortunately I could not see her, but instead beautiful black rain clouds flashing with lightening catching up to us.


We rode for about ten or fifteen minutes until we were almost all the way up the valley. We must have gone two or three miles and just as we pulled into the last village I began to feel rain drops hit my face. The bike pulled up in front of a beautiful, dark, three-story wooden house.


This is our village with the bamboo forest leaning over it.

This is the home we stayed in.

As I stiffly stepped off the bike, I looked back to see Zoe, then up at the storm coming in fast, and then back down at the other 20 or so matching houses. The bikes disappeared and Lanny lead us into the large house. As we stepped through the doorway the rain became to come down hard. The house must have been something like thirty or fourty feet by sixty or seventy feet. The first floor was comprised of a single massive earth floor room with a small closet bathroom on the other side. Among the many wooden pillars were tons of wooden farming machines, a gigantic mud stove, ginger, chickens, and a motorcycle.


We walked up the steps to the next floor which had about 9 or 10 rooms, which was where most of our time in the house was spent. There were 6 bedrooms of decent size, a kitchen, a large hall, a large open room with a shrine and refridgerator, a dining room, a kitchen, and a washroom. The wooden creaky floor, walls, and ceiling were made of dark faded wood, sometimes black if near a room where a fire were held in the winter. In fact, some rooms, like the dining room, were so black from soot that it was hard to see where the room ended in the evening.


Lanny lead us to our room, which was in one corner. Our room was completely sealed, unlike many of the rooms, but similar to all the bedrooms to stay warm in the winter. We did have one window, but our single light was broken. The Dong-style architecture is very intelligent. The house is extremely wide and open and in places like the hall you can see up to the next floor and outside. Nails are not really used; the best I can describe it as is a post and beam barn with thin borded walls with many gaps.


Eventually we did wander up to the third floor, which was another 5 or 6 rooms mostly used for storing rice and old equipment. No one lived on the third floor. The people who live here are Lanny's mother, father, and father's mother. She has two sisters, but like her they work and live all their time in the city.This is us with Lanny's father and uncle (left to right.)

Lanny was the only one who spoke english in the entire village and probably town, which consisted of thirteen villages. The town has roughly two thousand six hundred people and each village has about twenty to thirty Dong-style houses. With in each house there is around four to eight people, though it is almost all grandparents and children, this I will explain soon.


Up until recently everyone had to pay something around ten percent of their income to the government. I am guessing this usally took the form of giving away a tenth of the crop. Many of the new houses have brick walls for their first floor, but I much prefer the wood. There is a lot of new construction due to the jump in income. Lanny said this was because the government told the people that they have paid thier taxes long enough no it is no longer necessary. I think it is due to the need of farmers as China cannot grow enough food and also due to the average urban income being a fraction of a city dweller.


Meals were great. They were all cooked in a single bowl and the rice in a pressure cooker. Usually there was a salty cabbage dish, a bowl full of pork fat, chicken, and some greens, and a third dish that was usually greens but I do not know what kind or tofu. We ate it on top of rice with chopsticks. Dinner was usually served with beer.

It was impossible to be vegetarian. We would pick around the meat, but I think that the family thought we were being modest by not eating the meat, so they would put big slabs of it on top of our rice. Most of the time I could not tell if we were eating pork or beef.


Things were a tad hostile to begin with. Somewhat by chance and a bit by interest, dinner conversations usually ended in us telling them how much we disapproved of the American military. The only thing Lanny translated from her uncle, which he asked her to tell us, was that he was in the Chinese military for over a decade. While we were there they told us Osama Bin Laden had been found. They asked us if we were happy; we both replied no.


Because it is the monsoon, it rained almost every day we were there. We often woke to heavy rains early in the morning, and light showers would pass continually. Because of all the rain, there was little farm work to be done. We took this opportunity to catch up on sleep. Zoe and I slept between eleven and twelve hours almost every day.


Work was divided up in an interesting fashion. The grandmother, who must have been in her seventies at least, would do most of the cooking and feeding the animals. The father would do a lot of the more physically demanding farm work, such as hoeing and plowing. The mother worked the most by far. She was very shy and late at night I found her doing work such as preparing the ginger to be planted. Lanny did very little other than occasionally cooking and some cleaning. She was usually glued to her laptop. As for us, we did almost nothing except plant ginger one day. We washed our clothes in tofu water and then soaked them in the river, though.

This left most of our day for walks when it was not raining, drinking a ton of tea, chatting with Lanny, and watching in wonder the grandmother cook complicated meals in very short amounts of time. We constantly offered to do work, but every time we got no, or that there was nothing to be done.


One day the neighbors offered kind of as a joke for us to play mahjong at their house. Of course we took them up on it. Lanny frantically translated as many of the rules as possible as we threw tiles down and picked new ones up. It was difficult because some of the tiles had characters for their value instead of quantity images. We learned a lot quickly and played seven or eight games. It was a lot of fun, but the speed at which they played was exhausting. Lanny told us afterward that eighty percent of china plays mahjong every day for money, but if there was not money involved few would play. We played for no money.


On one of the many walks further up the valley, we discovered large holes in the sides of the hills, some large enough to easily crawl into, some charred. Many of these holes were for storing ginger over the winter to make sure it did not completely freeze. Snow does fall in Tongdao, according to Lanny somewhere between three and five inches. The charred holes are where the villagers make charcoal to heat their homes in the winter. On another walk we saw this smokey process and I would be interested in learning more about it.

The crops are mostly ginger and rice neatly grown in the hundreds of ponds, fields, and terraces. Depending on the number of people in one's family, one receives an adaquate amount of land to support everyone. Aparently one "Mou" is distributed per person, which is roughly the same amount as one acre. There are also a bunch of orchards, most of them for decorative park trees, but I do not know how that works if the land is redistributed every ten to fifteen years.


There is more to come...