Knee Deep in the Mud

For some people living in Japan means doing really traditional Japanese cultural activities like karate, judo, or learning how to properly dress in a kimono. Me, I basically live a very modern lifestyle here in Japan. I ride the bullet train, hang out in the downtown areas of the big cities like Osaka and Kyoto, and haven’t really learned any traditional arts. On my free time I usually play baseball, basketball and mini-soccer and go out to restaurants with my friends.

So last weekend when I was invited to go out into the fields and experience traditional rice field planting I thought it would be a good chance for me to experience some traditional Japanese culture. Every year the town teams up with a local farm to do an Agricultural Experience Tour. Its primarily aimed at families who have recently relocated from the big cities to live a more peaceful life in Seika. For most of these families who didn’t grow up in the country side it’s an opportunity for the parents and kids to experience traditional Japanese agriculture.

Seika Town was and still is a pretty traditional farming community. Even though there are now a lot of modern research facilities and tech companies in town there are still agricultural fields almost everywhere you look. During the winter all the rice fields were just left barren and dry, but starting last month they were all irrigated with water in preparation for rice planting. It’s a little strange to wake up one day and all the dirt fields are all of a sudden swamps. The cool thing is that frogs love the swampy rice fields so at night its really calming to listen to the croaking of the frogs outside of the window.

Being a city-boy I had no idea how rice planting works and I just figured that they throw out a lot of seeds into the freshly irrigated fields. But that’s not the way its done. First they germinate and grow the rice seeds in hot houses until the sprouts are about 8 inches tall. These days they have a handy tractor-like machine that takes a bed of rice sprouts and automatically distributes them evenly into the muddy fields. Since we went out to learn the traditional way of rice planting we didn’t use the machine and we all did it by hand. As I said before the once dry fields are flooded with water so that the dirt turns to mud and there is about 4 inches of water above ground level. We all went in barefoot and instantly sunk almost knee deep in the mud. It was a pretty weird feeling to be sunk in mud, especially since there are all sorts of unidentifiable clumps and odd textured things in the mud that you keep stepping on. I was just thankful that there didn’t seem to be any leeches in the water despite the swampy feel of it. From there you take about 3 rice sprouts and with your thumb and forefinger plunge them into the mud. You need to space them about 6 inches apart in a straight line so that once they are ready for harvest the harvesting machine can properly cut and collect the now 3 foot (1m) high rice plants.

There was about 50 people doing the tour, parents with their young children making up the majority of participants. It was funny because the kids were so typical, saying things like, “Eeeww, the mud is gross!” or “This is so boring.” So as you might expect after about 10 minutes of planting the rice most of the kids quit, wandered off, or starting looking for frogs to catch. This left the parents and me to finish up the job. With about 25 grown-ups it took us about an hour to plant the whole field.

I thought it was a cool experience and I filled my quota for traditional activities for the time being. I also got a bunch of the rice sprouts which I am taking home and I am going to try to grow them on my veranda in buckets. I wonder if it will actually work!?

Hometown Tour

Recently I was introduced to a Mr. Shinohara who is part of the Seika Elderly Talent Association and who has been organizing tours of some of the historical sites and local facilities of Seika Town. Mr. Shinohara was kind enough to invite me along for the practice run of their next tour which will take place in Fall.

The idea is to do a practice run of the tour to gauge how long it will take, which route to walk and more importantly to study the sites and local areas beforehand so that the tour guides and volunteers will be able to field questions during the real tour.

So last Friday I met up with a group from the Seika Elderly Talent Association and we took a walking tour of some of the old shrines, neighborhoods and new facilities in Seika Town. Our first stop was Kasuga Shrine in the north part of Seika. This is one of the oldest shrines in the area which has a long and interesting history, and beautiful architecture. The shrine was once designated as local park so the surrounding area has rest areas and the feel of a recreational spot. The shrine has a few separated buildings so we walked through the old neighborhood and looked at the main shrines and small prayer offering locations.

Next we walked around the local agricultural fields to the Kizu River Water Purification Treatment Center for a tour of the facilities. The center is located right next to the local Community Recreation Center which I often play basketball at, but until the tour had no idea exactly what purpose it served. It turns out that it is a highly developed water treatment center which is the first of its kind in Japan that purifies sewage and house water waste so that it can be returned to the Kizu River without causing any pollution. I have to admit that I didn’t really understand the technology behind the process but they assured us that by the time the sewage leaves the plant it is so clean that fish and other wildlife can live in the treated water alone.

The facilities just look like a few normal buildings but the real equipment is underground. We took a tour of the underground tunnels with pipes and machinery everywhere processing and filtering the sewage over and over until it is clean enough to be released in the river. The plant is quite impressive and even separates the sediment from the water which is in turn recycled and turned into cement and other building materials.

After the water treatment facility tour we walked over to Hosono Shrine which was the site of the famed Igomori Festival which I wrote about back in January in this blog. While I had been there before this was my first time to see it in the day time and with the benefit of Mr. Shinohara’s knowledge I gained a new understanding of the history of the shrine and the ceremonies that are traditionally carried out there.

After the tour we all went back to the Seika Elderly Talent Association Center and had a nice bento lunch and talked about plans for the day of the real tour, and everyone’s impressions of the sites. Then Mr. Asada who is the director of the center and an experienced Japanese tea ceremony presenter explained proper tea preparation while he served us traditional Japanese green tea.

For me it was really interesting to be a part of the tour with the local people and to learn more about the traditional and modern aspects of the place where I live and work. I have to thank everyone from the Seika Elderly Talent Association, especially Mr. Shinohara for inviting me to take part and for explaining everything for me.

Community Baseball Tournament

This past weekend there was a baseball tournament held in Seika for some of the teams from different towns in the area. The level of play is not that high and its mostly just for fun. Our team was comprised of government workers from the town of Seika. One of the other teams was the Farmers Association of Yamashiro town.

It was really nice weather that weekend so a lot of the player’s wives and kids all came out to watch and cheer on their fathers. The Seika Town team played on Saturday and Sunday. I played in the game on Sunday but missed the one on Saturday. One of the firemen from Seika almost made it into professional ball with the Hiroshima Carps so he is a really good pitcher. I heard that he throws between 130-140km/h which is way above the standard for the level of play in this tournament. I didn’t get the chance to see him pitch but I heard that he struck out almost every batter and only a couple people were even able to hit the ball. Also I heard that the day he pitched a lot of people came out just to watch since they all knew he almost went pro.

Unfortunately on the day I played we lost by one run, but it was still really fun to go out in the sun and play with my coworkers and see everyone having a good time.

Monkey Park

CAUTION

Don’t stare at the monkeys in the eye
Don’t touch the monkeys
Don’t feed them outside

That was the warning that they gave us before entering the Monkey Park in Arashiyama (Western Kyoto City). Monkey Park is also referred to as Monkey Mountain and is perhaps my favorite place in Kyoto. It is a wildlife preserve of sorts. Or maybe it would be better described as a small mountain on the outskirts of Kyoto City were over a 150 Japanese Monkeys live freely and humans are allowed to go see them.

What ever it is it is definitely not a zoo. The monkeys are free to roam around and do what they want. There are no cages, and I doubt that the fences they have up would stop them from leaving if they wanted to. But why would they want to?! It seems like a scene from the Twighlight Zone; at this park the humans are inside a cage and the monkeys get to look at us from the outside! Well, that’s not entirely true either. Humans are free to wander amongst the primates as well but if you want to feed them you have to go inside a caged area where you can buy fruits and vegetables to give them through the fence. This is probably a good idea since those little hairy people get kinda vicious once they see food. And where I realized why you don’t stare them in the eye. I tried that from within the safety of the cage. The rather large male’s eyebrows slowly raised, his eyes got big and he started screaming and rattling the fence. I guess its that whole sign of confrontation in the wild idea.



Upon entering the park you have to climb about 20 min before you start seeing the monkeys but then all of a sudden you realize they are everywhere and could ambush you if they felt like it. But mostly they don’t care too much about people, that is unless you get to close or break one of the 3 rules laid out before.

There are old monkeys, baby monkeys, big monkeys, little monkeys, ugly monkeys and cute monkeys and they are everywhere. One monkey looked just like my friends Sef. Another one was just licking everything in sight. One baby was racing around with his hand over his eyes tripping on everything. One bared his teeth at me and menacingly followed me for a couple minutes after I got too close taking a picture. All sorts of monkeys for all sorts of people, and all of them are funny.

I love Monkey Park and I highly recommend it to anyone who is in Kyoto! Here is the website link: http://www.kmpi.co.jp/

The Big Buddha & Deer

Last week my friend Kris was visiting me from California so while he was out here I wanted to show him some of the cultural sights. After experiencing the packed and hectic streets of Tokyo he was ready to see some more peaceful and slow-paced places in Kansai.

One of the places that I really wanted to show him was the Big Buddha (Daibutsu) at Todaiji in Nara City. Of course I have been there before but I wanted it to be a sort of surprise so I just told him that we were going to see a big statue of the Buddha. The surprise was going to be the size of the Buddha, and the hoards of deer roaming freely around Nara.

No matter how you try to describe the Daibutsu you can never really prepare anyone for the actual size of the statue. Its really huge and housed in an even larger temple. No matter how many times I have been there it is always a sight to see the humongous statue sitting so peacefully in that building which is roughly 1200 years old.

The day we went was also really sunny and warm and even though the cherry blossoms were long gone everywhere else there was still a few around Todaiji that were almost in full bloom. The other great thing is the hundreds of deer that hang out around the parks waiting for people to feed them deer crackers. If you hold the cracker out for them they will bow their heads until you give it to them. But they aren’t as well behaved as you might think. They chase little kids, sometimes bite, and will come up behind you and tug on your coat until you feed them. All in all they are really cute and its cool to see so many just hanging around.

Cherry Blossom Viewing (Ohanami) Part II

While this past Saturday I had the chance to see some beautiful cherry blossoms in Kyoto it wasn’t a real ohanami party. But on Sunday I meet up with a bunch of friends at the Osaka Castle Park for a full fledged ohanami party. Sunday was also overcast and it threatened to rain a few times, but it was really warm and the sakura were really going in the park which surrounds the Osaka Castle.

We had BBQs going, and a really talented musician friend brought his guitar so there was lots of fun to be had. We stayed until dusk when it finally started raining but the flowers were so beautiful and we were having so much fun that nobody seemed to mind the rain that much.

Cherry Blossom Viewing (Ohanami) Part I

The highly anticipated cherry blossom viewing season is finally upon us! In just the last week the weather has made a dramatic shift from cold and bitter winter to warm and sunny spring. Ushering in spring is my favorite part of living in Japan; cherry blossom viewing which is called ohanami in Japanese. Almost everywhere you look you can see beautiful white and pink sakura (cherry blossoms). Parks, streets, rivers, and temples are usually lined with sakura trees so for the short lived two weeks or so that they are blossoming everything looks even more gorgeous. But as much as I love the beauty of it all the real reason why I love this time of year is for the ohanami parties.

Most often held in parks, a ohanami party involves food, friends, drinks, nice weather, beautiful scenery and lots of fun. Everyone brings out a big blue tarp and lays it out on the grass underneath the cherry blossom trees with BBQ, snacks and drinks. Its totally acceptable to drink beer or anything else in the park and people often bring music and games as well. For the next couple of weeks I will be trying to enjoy the sakura and ohanami parties as much as possible and I will surely end up with hundreds of photos of the flowers and fun which I will post here for all to see!

My first opportunity came this past Saturday when I went with a friend to Maruyama Park in Kyoto City. It was a really warm day even though it was cloudy. The sakura were not in full bloom yet but there were still plenty of blossoms to see. Also just walking around Kawaramachi and Gion in Kyoto there were plenty of beautiful sites and photos to be taken everywhere you look.