米作りの時 (When I Went Rice Farming)

in which I drink lots of sake, eat fast food udon, and try and help Max get a girl’s number

So today we took our first cultural excursion with ATW to Saga prefecture, where we had a few hours of farming experience in beautiful terraced rice paddies. We called it farming, but what we really did was walk in the knee-deep rice paddies (I didn’t know rice could be knee-deep) very, very slowly, weeding as we progressed. It was pretty interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, except that there were occasional spiders and one water snake. There were a few cute frogs, though, that sat in my hands for a while, so that was fun.

(Here I would put pictures of us farming, but no one brought their own cameras to the paddies, for fear they would get wet. When ATW grants me access to their photos, I’ll update I suppose.)

It was forecasted to rain heavily, but by some magic it didn’t while we were weeding. It did start to sprinkle, but not until after, which was perfect. Because it has randomly become sunny once in a while, my host family has taken to calling me a hareotoko, literally a sunny man (meaning I have good luck with the weather).

After we farmed, we had a barbeque using food the farmers themselves grew / ranched. We roasted pork, beef, and chicken, along with plenty of vegetables and rice. To put it simply, it was delicious. Probably the best food I’ve had here (and I love Japanese food). It’s definitely made me appreciate fresh food. We had giant Asahi beers to pass around, and eventually they were joined by a huge bottle of sake. After eating and drinking for hours, we naturally became very jovial and started to laugh and take pictures and give each other hugs, etc. It was a good time. All of this on the side of a beautiful mountain, too, with a gorgeous view.

The view.

Everyone being jovial.

Delicious.

After the long bus ride back, we all went home to change and shower, and then a couple of us met again in Tenjin to go out to a bar. We went to this American bar because they wouldn’t let us into this other one because Devon has a tank top on, and they apparently had a dress code(lame). It was a little awkward, because we were the only group there (though there were about 12 of us), and they played English music and Oceans 12 with no sound on the tvs. For some reason almost everyone left quite early, leaving Anna, Max, Devon, and I there alone. Finding it too weird, we left and went to eat some fast food udon, which is still way good. Anna and I had eaten dinner, so we just shared some tempura. Anna had to be home before too late, so we walked her to the subway and then tried to figure out what to do with the night. Eventually, Devon suggested we go to this other bar, called Fu Bar. It was cool, though a little expensive, and they also played mainly American music, which was fine with me. We hung out there for a while, and Max started chatting up some Japanese girl who eventually disappeared. When I went up to the bar I saw her and told him she was over there, and he went to talk to her again, eventually being dragged to another bar, leaving Devon and I for about half an hour.

Eventually Devon started dancing with some girl, so I just started to dance with a random group of people until Max came back. Eventually we got tired, and left. I stayed at Max’s, on the floor (not comfortable, at all), since it was too late to go home to my host family.