Harvest Time!

This weekend I was lucky enough to harvest some rice at Tsurubara Farm in Oonomachi, when I saw lucky I mean, I got to work in my free time! However I had a good time, stop reading if you’re not interested in how the harvest process works. Here is how we did it.
We started of by gathering the courage to start, I think this is a very important part of the harvest process and is not to be underestimated. After gathering enough courage and taking pictures of the rice field we started off. You got the rice with a sickle, one that looks like the one on the soviet flag. You don’t really cut the rice as much as you slice it off. Which I guess is the same thing, as soon as you get the hang of you’ll be going through the rice field pretty quick. Don’t be fooled though, it isn’t light work at all, it was really quite hot that day and working in the sun really tires you out.
After cutting about half the field, it was time for a very nice barbecue, with fresh vegetables practically straight off the field (no rice, we left that in the field). After the barbecue we went back to the field and gathered some bamboo, to make a structure to dry the rice. But before you can hang the rice to dry, you must first bind it together, which is just not a very fun thing to do… It takes forever and feels like your making no progress at all, when you see you ARE making progress and are nearly done, it’s just the greatest feeling. After we were done with the entire thing, we had a quick bite to eat and went off to an onsen. This Onsen is based on the same mountain as where I saw the monkeys the other day, but due to it being pitched black dark, I didn’t see any monkeys which didn’t ruin my night to be honest, because it was a nice onsen, kind off small but the company and atmosphere was good. Plus the onsen was extremely hot.
After melting in the onsen for an hour or so we headed off to find something to eat, and found out the place we were headed for was closed, so went for some Korean food, which I must say was really good and really spicy. But I like my food a bit spicy. So after being returned home by Tsurubarasan (つるぽん) It was a good day which I had good feeling about.
Thursday I have to do a survey on a bus, I hope I can make out what people are saying and manage to my job! Saturday I am moving house, to the city. Looking forward to watching all my shows again, living in the city and living closer to work so I don’t feel so damn tired every time I get home!

Music: Black Milk
Mood: Nervous

PS. No more pictures (by me) until I get proper editing software, so that will be Saturday!

Camera and a new place!

Oh man what a weekend! Nah I’m kidding, I did not do all that much this weekend, I did find an apartment, bought a camera and went to Yufuin! Let’s start with the most important! The camera, I went to a mall on Saturday to buy a camera, I had already done my research (with thanks to Eelco), I had been playing with the thought of buying a camera for awhile and decided now was the time, a good, relatively cheap camera became available.

I bought the Pentax K-X with a 18-55 lens, and a 55-300 Lens. Motives for buying the camera, were simple, it was the price, using it is relatively simple, it looks cool, is good a night photography and it comes with two lenses (other cameras just get you the body for the same price). This gives you an introduction of why I went to Yufuin.

(Next paragraph is full camera talk) I went to Yufu for the sole reason to play with my new camera, hehe. The place itself is not that special I think, it is a typical touristy Japanese town. It’s got a lot of character, but that’s spoiled by the amount of people in the town and the silly amount of stores selling the same stuff. But I came there to take pictures, and so I did. Took some nice ones I think, and a lot of blur! The effects I want to get out of my camera is going to take me some time a tripod and macro lens! I might buy a little tripod, but I am definitely not going to buy a macro lens at this moment. So I am going to settle for a Raynox 150, for doing some light macro work. I also went out tonight, after reading a lot about night photography, to shoot some pictures of the street in front of the house.

I think I managed to get a couple of nice ones out of it. Well that is for a first try, without Photoshop to work with. Oh yea Also found an apartment! It’s a nice place, LeoPalace in the middle of town, does not cost me as much as I thought, it’s got everything I need in it, fridge, washing machine, internet, futon, TV, microwave all I need is some chopsticks and an iron, and I’ll be set! I’ll get some pictures of the place up later. I will be moving house on the 23rd.

Listening to: Joell Ortiz

(edit: Added some pictures!)

Mikoshi!

This week was another fun one! I have picked up running again, because I was feeling the urge to run. I ran in the area around my host family’s house. Encountered this super nice river amongst the rice fields, I will have a pictures next week I think.  Or not it is really up to me whether or not I take my camera with me.
All right! Back to the fun and interesting stuff! Well to me at least. Friday I went to a sand onsen called Hyotan in Beppu, this was my first time, and I must say it felt very good. You basically do like you do on the beach, get buried in the sand; however this sand is very hot. The heat comes from everywhere, and I am not quite sure how it works but I guess there is hot water underneath the sand, heating up all the sand, it kind of feels like a walk on the beach when it is really hot and your feet hurt when you walk on the sand. Kind of felt like that, after hiding in the sand for a while, you enter the bathing area, which was pretty good in this onsen, a big waterfall like bath, an outside bath and clean inside bath.

The fun stuff continued the next Saturday, I went to a festival introduced to me as a Yamamatsuri in Nakatsuka, and this was one of the best festivals I have been to yet. It all took place in the small town of Nakatsuka, after arriving a little bit late we were immediately welcomed with the enthusiasm that I am starting to get used to here in the south. Everybody is extremely friendly, and I think foreigners are not that plenty down here everybody wants to talk to you. The usual questions come up, “do you like beer?” “Where are you from?” “What beer is from Holland”, man talk! So after drinking a beer, it was time to carry the mikoshi. This was quite fun, since I am not really prepared to carry a real mikoshi I got to help carry the Kids Mikoshi, don’t think that means it would be light. Thing is still damn heavy, it is just the real Mikoshi, are even heavier. It was a fun night, during which one kid asked me whether or not I was Japanese, I of course said Yes and somehow she did not believe me, hehe. But since I had to go see the boss the next day, at around 11 it was time for me to go home and sleep, which was kind of a shame because the people I had met that night were all super friendly and I would have loved to drunk some more with the people there.

The next day was another busy one, leaving at 10 o’clock to go see my Sacho(boss) speak at a fair for Ryugakusei(International students). The speeches themselves were really hard for me to follow but I managed to get most of the story and it was quite interesting. Sacho talked about how hiring exchange students in the past helped him out in the past, and how it is still helping him out, because one of them is running their sister firm in China, and the other one is my internship supervisor! Quite interesting, however this event was not for me, but more for people with a better grasp of the Japanese language. There were a lot Chinese and Korean people in the audience and only a few westerners.

After listening to the speeches at the fair, Umeki San, Tsuru san and Yamaguchi san and me went to see the monkeys on Mt. Takasaki.

Man this was awesome, it was not quite as wild as I had imagined, but there definitely monkeys there, and I could have taken one to Riverside if I had wanted too. They were really cute too, lots of tiny monkeys, playing in the puddles.

After seeing the monkeys, we went to the Umi tamago, man that was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. I guess it has been a while since I last visited the Dolfinarium (I think the last time was when I was about 10 years old?). But it was a good time, I keep getting surprised by the sheer size of animals, for examples sea lions are just these huge creatures, really cute but at the same time they are a bit scary because of their size. I played some catch with dolphins, this was definitely a highlight for me. The dolphins would toss me the ball and I would toss it back, I guess that is a simple explanation of catch, but the fact that it was with dolphins made it super cool.

The big aquarium was filled with fish from seas from all over the world. They really thought about the presentation of the aquarium and you can view it through a giant glass wall, which even extends a little bit into the floor. There were a lot of beautiful fish, and I kept laughing as my co workers asked which fish were good to eat!

So after watching fish all day, everybody felt like eating sashimi for some reason. We went to my new favourite restaurant and ate until we could not eat anymore.

So this was another weekend full of activities, contemplating whether or not I should take a break next weekend, or just keep on trucking. There is still a lot of things I want to see and do here in Kyushu, anyway I’ll keep on posting over here!

My work

When I first arrived at Chiikikagaku, I was drenched in sweat, I carried my suitcase from the station to the company, which is not that far but it was still very hot. Maybe not the best first impression, but as soon as people saw my suitcase, everybody understood what went down. I was introduced to some people in the company and was told to come back on Monday, 8.30 sharp.

 On the follow Monday I was introduced in the traditional Japanese way by giving a small speech about my self, my hobbies, my hometown and until when I will be staying with the company. And afterwards it was time for my introduction interview. This was conducted entirely in Japanese; I somehow managed to understand everything and realized what I am going to be doing here. I will be basically be doing whatever they tell me to do. Haha. This means the day to day business of the company, I will be shown around and work in most of the departments helping in which ever way I can with my limited Japanese but fluent English.
My goals during my stay here are simple but very hard. I want to improve my Japanese reading and speaking ability, as well as understand more about the Japanese way of running a company which I believe is very interesting. I am very glad that I went the usual route of going to a Japanese University first and then to the internship, because even though my Japanese is limited now, it feels like it is a million times better than it was in February. I am able to answer and ask my co-workers a lot of questions in Japanese, this hopefully will enable me to fit in the company really smoothly.
The people in the company are all very nice and for some reason very interested in Holland, so it is easy to talk to them about Dutch or European things. Plus it seems that a lot of people here have not been to Tokyo or want to reminisce about Tokyo, so I can talk about that too. But besides that I think am willing to try and do a lot of things, for example I want to climb a mountain whilst I am here! There are some hiking enthusiasts at the company so that is a bonding factor. Other than I am pretty much down for what ever, I love drinking and playing soccer so I plan to do those things here too! Even though I try to adapt myself to the Japanese culture I will also try to be myself, I am able to function in  Japanese society, but am still so very Dutch. I think being Dutch is a quality when you use it with good measurement.

Current mood: Excited and Coffee is keeping me awake for the ride