Back to my rice roots

Sorry for the delay again and thanks for all the birthday wishes! We are bogged down with packing and goodbye parties so I'll probably post more fun stuff when I get back even though it will be after the fact a bit. I took literally a thousand pictures in the last month from all my schools and fun events. I swear I'll get them up eventually. I'll have plenty of time when I'm unemployed!


In the meantime, I feel I must write about one thing I was looking forward to attempting while in rural Japan... rice planting! It was a close call though. I happened to be at one of my elementary schools the day that they were turning over the fields with local farmers so I dug in and hoed away with my students. The teachers were all impressed with my farming action and asked if I'd done it before. I told them it must be my genes. My grandmother and great grandparents were farmers so I guess some of it is in me somewhere.



They invited me to actually plant the rice stalks later on in the month, but they had to reschedule due to rain and forgot that I was coming so I missed out. I was so bummed. I had my farming clothes and hat all ready. Luckily another school found out that I'd missed out and invited me to their farming day. Yeh!

So I joined my students for a couple hours of rice planting. The soil is super soft and muddy. It kind of feels like a mud bath and I swear my skin felt a little softer afterwards. Some parts of the soil felt warm and others cold. Go figure. I went in barefoot, but I noticed some of the kids kept their socks on. I didn't ask why, but maybe some of them were saying how it felt icky on their feet so maybe that's why. I found it a little bizarre.


The farmers were all very sweet and encouraging even though they must be a little annoyed with the kids throwing mud and not aligning the plants properly. I suppose they're used to it, as its an annual event. Maybe they go over the whole field again with machines once the kids are gone! We did a pretty good job though, I'd say. They gave us a handful of plants and then pulled a line across the field with tiny red dots on it. So it was pretty easy to just stick the plant in where the dots were. But the real technique was keeping the little stalks as a unit and decided how deep was good for growing. Naturally I got the technique after a few stalks, ahem, nothing to it.


Afterwards we washed our feet in the running river water along the banks that fill up the fields. It was cool to be a part of nature and a very cultural experience. The school said they would look after my patch for me and when the crops are ready, they'll make rice cakes (mochi) and all will come full circle.