Sand Bath

Yayoi's cousin Arima-san picked us up at the Kagoshima train station and drove us south to locations near Ibusuki. At Ibusuki itself which is a very touristy town, we entered a building next to the beach, picked up our ankle length yukatas and changed into these. Then we walked outside and down to the beach beneath a canopied structure.
Here we were asked to lie down with our heads on sandy pillows. Then sand was shoveled over our entire bodies except our towel wrapped heads. The heat from the geothermally heated water mixing with sea water beneath our bodies became warm enough that it almost caused burns. The recommended time was ten minutes, but the ideal was to stay until you began to sweat.
When you were tired of this you forced your way out of the sand and went back into the building to enjoy the sauna and/or the hot spring.
All sorts of medical claims were being made about the benefits of this treatment, such as turning your blood from black to a proper bright red.

 

 

Day off on Tuesday and Saturday

Yes, it's a 6 day week in Japan. Today is Saturday February 4, but on Tuesday afternoon Arima-san took us on a whirlwind tour visiting scenic sites and parks around Kagoshima. The park portrayed here is a prefectural (provincial in Canada) park and admission is free. This park is unique in that it had large expanses of grass (albeit brown) and in one area elderly people (like us) were playing a game they call "golfu". They use wooden mallets to hit a plastic ball and attempt to hit a cylinder suspended on a steel pole (like a bell) in as few shots as possible. I would have liked to have joined them and forget the week of work ahead. Today Saturday and Sunday we will be working in Cafe Cho-on-kan. It was a beautiful day outside today especially in the sunshine. Our two Taiwanese girls left early this morning for another WWOOFer site to finish off the rest of their 36 day university holiday. Tomorrow 3 Australians will be joining us.

 

 

 

 

Fire and Water

Today, February 3 we spent the morning pioneering. I used a backpack gasoline engine powering a circular saw bladed weed wacker to clear an unused terraced style field of tall grass and weeds near the original Gando farm. Kawasaki-san appears to be expanding his operations. Have a look at a Japanese website www.painter.co.jp and you may get an idea. Anyway after the field was cleared we raked up and burnt the brush. Kawasaki-san tilled some of it immediately bringing many rocks to the surface which we cleared when time allowed.
We were taken out by our young Japanese girl supervisor to an udon (fat noodles) shop for a well deserved lunch wearing our grubby work clothes.
In the afternoon 3 of us dug a shallow ditch along the concrete wall lining the upper side of the field to help drain the water sitting on one end of the field and also to drain water continually running from drain holes through the concrete wall from a concrete ditch above the field. These ditches are designed to control water flow and flood rice fields in spring.
Japan has an abundance of running water. Frequently dams are built in the hills to contain water until needed by rice farmers.

Trapped

We had decided when we left Canada that we would be snow birds and avoid bad weather in Japan. We visited Yayoi's home town during Christmas and had enough of snow there to satisfy us. We moved further south to. Oume, Tokyo. Then when things were in place we hopped on a Skymark plane ( new budget airline) and flew to Fukuoka. From there we visited Nagasaki for a day and then took a bus to Kagoshima where Yayoi was going to attempt to find out more about her mother's true roots (long story). We stayed in a weekly mansion for a week, but felt we could not afford it, so we applied for expensive WWOOFer memberships and moved to Gando farm. We work hard, get some food from our host and an old house which four WWOOFers share. BUT what most people in Canada do not realize is that there is no central heating in Japan. So unless we leave the main islands of Japan and go south to Okinawa we will be cold all day and night unless we are working hard.
The problem is that on top of the other disasters Japan has suffered in the last 12 months, it is now more than 10'C colder than normal here in Kagoshima and today (February 2, 2012) we were allowed to quit work because of a cold wind and snow that still forms a thin layer on the vegetation outside. And remember we did not expect this and are not dressed for this. We can see our breathe everywhere in the house except in the family room in which we have a few small space heaters. In the morning the temperature in the bedroom is a few degrees above zero. We do have a one person heating pad under our futon beds across our leg area.
Yes, we are trapped as many parts of Japan other than here have 4-5 times as much snow as usual.

Cats and dogs in Japan

You see many cats (neko) on the loose in Japan. There does not appear to be any law concerning their freedom. I am not sure whether they are feral cats, but they never appear to be connected to a particular home. They appear in the most unusual circumstances such as prowling rooftops, while we are listening to a concert in Yokosuka. A little distracting considering the rough tile (concrete composition) steep roof it was prowling about. In the mansion we stayed in Kagoshima it sounded as though cats were romancing outside our fourth floor window.
The dog (inu) I most associate with Japan is the shibaken. This is usually a compact well built dog of a tan colour. Another Japanese breed similar to a husky in appearance is the Akita.

Japanese carp or Koi

Koi can live over 40 years and are admired, possibly revered by the people here. You see koi in many water ways including the wild gray variety seen in ditches such as on the walk from the train in Tokyo. These koi can be eaten and we have eaten them, but they are not usually a sport for fishermen. Second class koi such as the photos can be seen in places such as castle (jo) moats. After a few generations they lose their colour and develop the wild dark gray colour. Breeders use tiny tubes to select dark coloured mosquito larvae sized fish from a batch of hatchlings to see whether they will become champion koi. The rest are used as food for other creatures, including rejects at later stages. Fish fertilizer is very common especially on the Gando farm, but this is probably made from rejects of commercial fishermen or fish byproducts.

 

 

Working on the chain gang

Today we cleared substantial volumes of volcanic ash deposited for a long time period at the side of the road next to the new chicken coop of the Gando farm. Many plant roots permeated this "soil", but the farmers do not appreciate the ash, because it "burns" plants when it lands on them, but I suspect this is a chemical burn.
Kawasaki-san treated the 4 WWOOFers here to coffee at a cafe with many types of snack breads, from pizza like breads to sweet buns.
After lunch I was set to work using a Japanese hand saw cutting off knobs from 10 meter bamboo poles. My computer muscles were really put to the test, but with help from Yayoi later in the afternoon we finished the pile Kawasaki-san will use to build another "shelter" at some peculiar location.
There is at least one Canadian who laughed out loud when I suggested we would be doing farm work and I would be shovelling.