Stephanie in Japan: A Day on the Farm

The other day, I had a very Japanese-y experience. There were a lot of “firsts” for me. So without further ado, let me let you about it.

I was invited by one of my adult night class students to her friend’s big, traditional Japanese-style home in order to experience rice planting and nagashi soumen. There were many people there…maybe around 40 or so. When I first arrived, I didn’t really know what was going on or what I’d be doing, so I just kind of chilled and waited for people to tell me what to do.

First, I was taken to the rice fields where some people were already working just to watch a bit. After that, we went back to the house and made homemade onigiri (rice balls) for all the workers and guests. We cooked the rice in a real wood-burning oven. I tended to the fire for a while and then helped make the onigiri. It was entertaining. We then brought all the onigiri along with tsukemono (Japanese pickles) and tea out to the fields where we all feasted. We must have made all least 100 onigiri!

Rice in a wood-burning oven.

After that, I rested and played with some little kids. My student showed me around the house a bit and taught me some things about Japanese culture like funeral ceremonies and calligraphy. The house was built 160 years ago and was fun to explore. There was a nice Japanese style garden in the front yard with koi fish!

Nice private garden.

After resting, I put on a pair of shorts and sandals and went out to the fields to help plant the rice. There were two other foreigners planting rice as well, a Spanish and an Italian guy. They were friendly. Rice planting was dirty, stinky, and hard work. Bugs crawled all over your feet. I was wishing I had a pair of boots like the other people. I’ll admit, it was kind of a neat experience, though! After planting, I was told I could go pick and eat “biwa” off a nearby tree. Biwa are an Asian fruit that I had never had before. They was really sweet and juicy! Maybe a little similar to an apricot.

RICE!

Good work everyone.

Enjoying biwa.

When we went back to the house, we did a kanpai (toast) and began feasting…again haha! I felt like I was gona explode at the end of all of it. There was a BBQ and nagashi soumen. The BBQ was normal, lots of meat and veggies that you dipped in tare, a Japanese sauce. However, it was my first time to do nagashi soumen. Nagashi soumen is where you take a very long piece of bamboo that is sliced in half, long-ways and steam water down it. Then someone stands at one end and puts soumen noodles into the stream while people standing around it try to catch them. Everyone has their own little bowls of noodle broth. If you catch the noodles, you dip them into your broth and then eat them. I enjoyed it!