Monday, May 30, 2011

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....


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This is where we are staying (second floor):


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


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

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This is the farm across the street:


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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:


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Hard at work:

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Setting up dinner after we got back.

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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?)

2 comments:

  1. Hi there,
    what a fantastic blog!
    I am thinking about WWOOF in Japan and wanted to know what the host number was for this family? Did you really enjoy yourself? and had you WWOOFed elsewhere?
    Would be highly appreciated.
    Hannah
    hannahgriffin93@gmail.com

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  2. I know it's been a while but in the rare chance that you do check up on your blog, I had the same questions as Hannah. How would you describe your wwoolf-ing experience in Japan? Was there difficulty with the language barrier? How was the application process, difficult? I would be delighted to hear back from you.

    Y.Lin
    yinglin92@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete