farm again, burn again

Apparently when you have a farm, you burn stuff. Luckily at this farm we only burned wood and paper, but you have to wonder, why do these people have so much random wood for burning? Our host brought 4 sweet potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil and threw those in the fire as well and we ate them about 10 minutes later as we watched the fire dwindle. Being that it was just a wood fire we were able to sit near it and warm our hands and watch the sun set. it was actually very nice.

I skipped ahead though. We arrived at 2nd and last farm in Japan on tuesday. This farm is about 40 minutes outside of Kobe. We spent a night in Kobe before coming. It was nice, but super expensive and walking around it reminded us all of madison avenue, but in more of a square shape. We walked through china town and that was fun, but the only thing chinese about it were the decorations. We were almost 100% sure everyone working there and walking around was still japanese. We ended up getting lost in a weird shopping mall that eventually led us to the water which was nice and we sat on a bench and watched a dinner cruise pull in. It was very romantic.



Tuesday afternoon we left our hostel and headed to our farm. We arrived at the train station but when we called our host to say "we're here!" She said "so am I, I dont see you..." We were obviously at the wrong train station but luckily it was only a few minutes away. The family we are staying with are very nice, the mother Mariko, and her husband (but we never see him cause he:s at work along with her daughter and son) some cousins which we havent really met, and her daughter in law and her two kids, a girl age 4 and a boy age 6. They are pretty cute but my tolerance for children is always hanging by a thread, especially when they cry. Mimi and Ashley think they are the cutest things in the world so any attention from me that is lacking is easily made up by their questions of "so you really like carrots dont you??" or "hi! did you have a super fun day at school?" these children do not speak english so blank stares are the normal response. Ayako, the daughter, and Meoko, the daughter in law speak very good english and its nice talking to them. All of our meals are prepared for us which is really a very nice treat and they have all been excellent so far. We do the dishes after every meal and assume its a fair trade. Today we learned how to make tempura at lunch which was fun, but eating it was more fun.

Our jobs so far have constisted of: putting up christmas lights, which made the nice looking office in the front of a house look like a cheap motel and the amount of twinkling lights could have given anyone a seizure. Not our best work. 2nd was harvesting potatoes and planting onions, the first real farming work weve done since being in Japan, and 3rd, which happened this morning, was vacuuming...the ceiling. It was raining so Mariko decided we shouldnt work outside. We essentially held a ladder and watched her sprint up the top with a hand held vacuum, stand on the beams of the high ceiling, and vacuum. She made Mimi stand on a table and hold the end of the vacuum up because she was the tallest. It was pretty weird, but an easy day to say the least. Then Mariko went out to teach a caligraphy class and told us to spend the rest of the day thinking of something we could make out of wood that will add to her garden. So we thought about it and walked around and still havent come up with anythin great. Our lack of carpentry skills is definitely taking a toll on what we think we could possibly do with some scrap wood, but I:m sure we:ll think of something great! As weird as it is to just invite yourself into someone elses home and life, it is nice to be around a family and out of a city. Time for dinner! Till next time