Apple Boys and Honey Girls

We arrived at our first farm in Suzaka on sunday night. After waiting at the train station for an hour for our host to pick us up we thought possibly we were in for a long drive to the farm. The house turned out to be a mere 10 minute drive and we later found out that our host had been at a bar and had lost track of time. We are staying in our own seperate house and I share a room with Mimi Ashley and our newest wwoofer friend, Bob, 22, from Scotland. There are also 2 other wwoofers here, Dan, 23, from England and Yuka, 28 from Japan. He picked her up at his last wwoofing place and they are now dating. Its a funny situation. We all get along very well. Our first night here Nagato, our host, showed us his library and let us hold a 300 year old samurai sword. He also brought out a bottle of jack daniels as an american welcome party. The next day we were put to work. As it turned out the farm we were staying at was actually an apple farm! We are apple pickers and its harder than it looks. There is a precise way of picking apples to get the stem to look right and apparently americans do not have that soft japanese touch that is required. It took us a while to get it right and some types of apples are easier than others. We have already decided which trees we prefer picking from and which we detest. For instance, some trees are very very large and have tons of apples up high and when you climb up your ladder you really feel like you're in a tree. Others have very thin trunks and when youre at the top of your ladder you really feel like you will just fall off and die (my least favorite type of tree). All the apples taste very good and last night at our official welcome dinner and after a few drinks our host decided that we were going to be called "honey girls" and the boys would be "apple boys." He did a little dance and it was hilarious. Aside from the apple picking we are trying to take turns cooking our meals, although Yuka is the primary chef because all the ingredients are in japanese and none of us know how to cook japanese food. One of these days we are going to venture up the mountains and go to the hot springs and see the monkeys there. For now we are just exhausted from a long day of harvesting apples and happy to catch a seat on the couch.

Dont forget you can email me! willysteigman@gmail.com !!! love you all hope all is well - till next time!

oh also, japanese candy is amazing and i have 180 cavities. and right now i:m eating chips called "wasabeef" because they are wasabi and beef flavored...welcome to japan!