I'm a Farmer!!!!

Last week was a very busy week. I had an exam every day of the week, and it was quite exhausting. So, what did I do to prepare for the extremely busy week? Well, the saturday before that week began I became a farmer for a day.

My friend Sho's family owns about an acre of farmland where they grow their own....(drum roll please)... Rice. What else would they grow? It was a very interesting experience. Me, Hide, and Sho went to Sho's home after a night of bowling and didn't go to bed till about 5am and we knew we'd be woken up at 8:30am... Not too bright, but what can I say. 8:30 rolled around and Sho's father, a stout, elderly man about mid 50's with a quiet and kind demeanor, that seems to exude a sense of wisdom, quietly sneaks into the room and wake up sho. I, in my half a sleep state, see Sho go from absolute lights-out asleep to beaming, ready to go consciousness in about half a second... it was amazing. Me and Hide on the other hand remained quietly asleep. As I began drifting back into full REM sleep, Sho bounds back into the room and screams, "Lets go Man!!! We've got to carry rice!!!" Hide and I spring awake and are ready in about the same time Sho was.

We ran down stairs and began carrying 30Kgm or 66 lbs bags of rice one by one to Sho's huge fridge where they keep their year's supply of rice. We carried approximately 24 bags. After that we ate a bit of breakfast then went to the fields. About a 5 minute walk in perfect weather, with the sun beaming and a cool breeze on our backs, we arrived ready to do whatever it was we were supposed to do. As we got closer to the fields, we could see Sho's father in the distance with another man who was riding what looked like an over sided riding lawn mower. What the man was riding on was an automatic rice shaker thingy... I unfortunately in my one day of being a farmer I was not able to gain the lingo that goes along with the title. Our job was to gather the bags filled with rice that the machine filled, and put the bags on the back of the truck. I suddenly began feeling a burning, itching feeling on my fore arms, at which point Sho says, "You should have worn long sleeves..." At which point I thought, "Helpful information at this point." The individual rice pebbles are covered in a flaky shell and this shell breaks off into very fine flakes and digs into the skin and becomes almost like fiber glass. After hauling about 16 bags of rice, we took the truck to a machine that dehydrates the rice and removes the flakes.

The one day of being a farmer was a wonderful experience. I learned a lot about farming rice and about how it doesn't use much ground nutrients, so there is no need for crop rotation and such, so the land lasts for quite a long time. I've now gained a better respect for those that provide us our food.

Whoops

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything the past couple weeks, but since classes have started there really hasn't been much going on. I'll give a quick synopsis of the past couple weeks.

After the chaos of orientation, classes began and I finally got to meet my teachers. I'm taking a total of four classes, Spoken Japanese 6, Reading and Writing 4, and two economics classes. My Spoken Teacher, Mr. Okawa, is a wonderful teacher and can speak impeccable english, just not during class... no english allowed in Japanese classes. My Reading and Writing teacher, Mr. Miyauchi, is also a wonderful teacher and keeps a pretty fun class. This brings me to my economics classes, which are both taught by... Dr. Campbell... and for the Woodberry guys, it's obviously not the same Dr. C. I have a very hard time calling my economics teacher Dr. Campbell... so I keep it simple with Mr. Campbell, which he is absolutely fine with. Well, my class schedule is quite crazy and not really what I expected... a little less organized than I would normally prefer.

Other than classes, we've had tons of holidays... this coming week will be the first full week of classes since school began. During these numerous Japanese holidays I've not really done much other than hanging out with all my friends. We did however go to a place called Arashiyama in Kyoto. This place is famous for keeping it's historical Japanese appeal. The day we arrived, it was rainy and I had a blinding headache, but I pushed on and wanted to experience everything. Arashiyama is located at the foot of a valley and is cut in half by a beautiful river, which wasn't so beautiful the day I went... in fact it was brown and quite ominous from all the rain water. We attempted to go check out the mountain Monkeys, but that trail was closed to the weather and we ended up just walking about 2km up the river to a dead end... This was about the peak of my headache, it was about here that we decided to try and check out some Temples around the area, but we ended up bailing on that idea as well. The constant, drizzling rain, the cold, and the ever darkening night canceled our plan to check out the temple fairly quick. The pain in my head was calling for some medicine, while everyone's empty stomachs were ready for food at the restaurant we made reservations at.

After downing some medicine, the 8 of us went to our tiny Takoyaki restaurant. (takoyaki is a fried ball of breading and vegetable with octopus inside) As we walked in to the "V" shaped restaurant that was built feet from the train tracks, the smell of fresh Takoyaki filled the air. Our party of 8 took over about half of the restaurant, and our 3 hour face stuffing began. Although the restaurant is a Takoyaki restaurant, the chef specially prepared a few other meals that he only does for special customers... Thanks to my friend Sho, we became "special customers."

That was about five days ago, and we're planning another trip to the restaurant. I apologize for the lack of pictures, but my camera died at Arashiyama, and I was unable to take pictures. I've got pictures of other things we've done, but I'm sure we'd all get tired of pictures of me hanging out with my friends. I'll be sure to do something interesting soon, so I can have some interesting pictures for you guys.

Thanks for the long wait!!!