I'd heard of WWOOFing last year from a couple friends in the Yukon, who'd spent 6 weeks or so farming birch syrup in the Canadian wilderness. Here in Japan, a couple friends had done it too, and talked up it's wonders.
Part of the attraction for me was that I was looking for an awesome vacation that would get along well with a wallet that was looking to stay nestled and hidden away as much as possible. If dust could grow on it and I could still have a good Golden Week (as close Japan comes to an extended holiday, a 4-5 day weekend), then I'd be happy. So away I went.
I got to stay with the lovely Junko and Hideki Isayama, Hideki-San's father, known to me only as Otōsan, and another Canadian WWOOFer from BC who I hadn't met named Morgan. They have a farm where they grow primarily rice, but also mushrooms, potatos, lettuce, onions, carrots, ginger, and Japanese Squash among others. They really welcomed me into their home, and I got the luxury of feasting on Junko's wonderful cooking and all of their hospitality. Here's a run-down of my 5-day mini-adventure...
 |
| (L-R, from back left) Morgan, Colin, Hideki-San Harai-San, who dropped by (no joke) because his horoscope told him to go North-East that day, Otosan Junko-San, and Hana-Chan, the black lab. |
A farmhouse of undetermined age (read: old). Otōsan grew up here. More on him soon, but this is important because he's 98 years old. It's tucked into an unassuming corner of a town of about 70 000. Japanese farms, because Japan, are often hidden in residential areas. Zoning isn't as big a thing in Japan, and you'll often find rice fields tucked between apartment buildings. It is small, with a shed, and backs onto a high-school field. The sounds and sights (luckly both prevailing winds and distance saved us from the smells) of boys rugby drift in from the sidelines.
The fields: A farmer will generally have multiple fields (Hideki-San has about 12, mostly rice, but also mixed vegetable). One is at his house, and filled with unequal parts weeds and young, upstart vegetables, with the ratio showing a hand that is ruthless with it's grass and dandelions.
 |
| Because if you're going to pose for a picture, you might as well be a tool holding a useful tool |
One is right beside the house. And will soon be sprouting rice.
Two are tucked up on a mountainside, unplowed and looking more like grassy lots.
The rest are unseen, but the characters assure our audience that yes, they do exist, and yes, they will keep our stomachs full come fall.
The town: Hita City, Oita Prefecture. Up in the mountains in sparsely inhabited Oita. Home of monkeys and wild boars and even a few people. There are trees and hills and rivers, speckled by long bridges and dotted with farms and fields. Beautiful to drive through and even nicer to stop in, especially if that stop happens to be one of their famous onsen, or hot springs.
The Players:
Yours Truly: Your Hero. Ready to get his feet wet, his boots dirty and his brain filled.
Hideki Isayama: Our Hero's benefactor, host and both a staunch supplier of knowledge, support and conversation (both in English and Japanese), and opponent of organization and timeliness. As Yours Truly would say, "He's a bundle of wonder, organic veggies and sweetness"
Junko Isayama: Hostess, Chef, fellow proprietor, and co-conspirator in keeping things a step above unravelled. Caring, kind, and a bit high-strung, but also lovely to talk to, if only in Japanese, with occasional Hideki translations)
Otōsan: Completely deaf in one ear, quiet, but not morose. 98 years old. Looks 80. Walks with a cane. Uses said cane to walk to the garden where he spends 6 hours a day tending and creating his own patch of potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, goya (bitter melon), beans and flowers. Because hey, what else are you going to do with all the energy an almost-century gives you?
Possibly the most intriguing character, informing you, through his translator and son, that he spent 13 years living in 1930s Manchuria, and two years following languishing in a Siberian work camp, digging graves in permafrost and dreaming of the day he'd go home.
The Story:
Day 1: Yours Truly arrives, meets the players, and are rushed off to what can only be described as a Japanese organic hippy collective. A building in a small town, filled with organic merchants hawking oils, jams, bread and buns, rice-waffles, coffee, tea, and clothes. There's a raised section at the back that functions as a cafe. In front of it a woman occasionally plays guitar or ukulele and sings. A man plays a Japanese flute, dressed in an old tuxedo jacket and a bowtie, apparently filling his role both as musician and comedian, although like always, Japanese comedy seems to slip right by me.
Morgan and Yours Truly relax and take in the scene, occasionally helping and more often getting in the way. Half-naked children cavort. People eat. People sing. The foreigners are gawked at. They wave and grin ridiculously back. They head home, eat a wonderful dinner and the best angel food cake seen this side of anywhere, and sleep
Day 2: Mushrooms
7AM: Dog-Walking with the lovely Hana. Up a mountain and through a forest
9AM (ish, with push-backs as needed: "Just a minute it's not ready." "oooh almost ready, just a minute set the table." Such things accompany every meal, and are quickly adjusted to, by me at least)
10AM-12PM: Loitering and garden watering. Rugby player gawking. Yours Truly contemplates joining a team somewhere. He misses it.
1PM: Delicious Japanese lunch
2PM-5PM: Hideki-San, Morgan and Colin head to the woods. Hideki-San senses the force in Colin. Sensibly leaves the power-tools to the person least likely to hurt himself and others with it: Morgan. He drills, and Yours Truly hammers mushroom spores into the log. In a year and a half: ZAP! shiitake appears!
6PM-10PM: Shower, procrastination, preparation, a late dinner, and bed by 10PM. Our hero collapses onto his futon, unresponsive except for labrador-retriever type twitches till the new day beckons
Day 3: Things Get Shitty
Cow-Shitty to be exact. This day progresses much like the day before, at a leisurely pace, with the biggest difference being that instead of mushroom planting, today is a day for poop-spreading. Morgan and Colin are in charge of spreading 2.8 metric tons of dirt and cow-doo onto a field that will soon be the home of rows of corn, beans, and potatoes. It's messy work, and god knows we don't smell pretty, but we're busy, and time flies almost as fast as their shovels of reformatted and well-digested corn does.
Day 4:
Rain. So no poop today. Morgan tears up a little at the lost chance to drive again in Japan (the novelty of narrow roads and his fellow drivers' unchecked blindspots has yet to wear off), but his month here is far from over, so our hero brings his consolation skills into play.
The foreigners and Hideki-San spend the day sorting rice seeds into high and low quality. It goes like this: prepare a bucket of salt-water at a certain density. The good seeds sink, the poor ones float. Separate. Dry in the sun. Use all the good seeds and the poor ones as needed.Our stalwart champion accompanies Hideki-San to his friend's to pick up a machine. Harada-san is a craftsman. He uses traditional Japanese methods to make earthen tiles and buildings. He has a wonderful smile and an almost as wonderful beard. He says he's 52, young for a Japanese farmer. Every year he goes to Germany to work on his trade. He's cool and kind, and I think we'd be buddies if I lived less than two hours away.
In the evening the men, Colin, Morgan, Otōsan, and Hideki-san, all go to the local hot-spring, where they rejoice in the indoor/outdoor, earth's core heated pools, varying from "Oh my God" to luke-warm, to a herb soak, to a jet-pool. Everyone wears their onsen clothes, which are very similar to what you were wearing when you came out of your mother, with the possible exception of a modestly placed, extremely small towel.
Day 5: The sky is tinged with the upcoming departure of our champion, but the world and the farm wait for no man- a final day of work lies ahead.
Colin and Morgan spend another day hauling poop. Do some mountain-side exploring at lunch (that's stage-talk for getting lost and coincidentally taking in scenery). Our hero departs in the late afternoon, enjoys the beautiful two hour drive through the mountains, and in a move completely out of character for him, immediately starts writing about his experience.
Fade In: An alarm is set- school tomorrow! A head crashes onto a pillow, the world goes dark.
