Rice Planting in Fukushima and Shopping for a Drag Show, and Karaoke!

5/20/2017

The next weekend I went out to Fukushima City and stayed the night at my friend Cormac’s house. We had both signed up for an exciting tour with our friend Ken and a group of Japanese people.

Ken works with the tourism department of Fukushima City and every few months he organizes activities and tours for the English Teachers in Fukushima City. At these tours he invites many Japanese government workers and puts us in groups so we can talk and get to know each other.

This week Ken and a man named Mr. Yasu (I’m pretty sure that is not his entire last name) organized a trip for five of us English teachers and maybe eight Japanese government workers to get together and plant rice. 

If you'd like to read about the event from Ken's point of view in many different pages and topics, you can visit the blog he writes for the city here! There are many pages on the site, so be aware that parts of the story will be found in many places. (At the time of this publishing, the blog pages about the rice planting event could be found on site pages 3 and 4. I do believe they are the oldest pages on this site, if that helps you find them.) If the link ever breaks, you can find the site here: http://fukushimalocalactivities.blog.jp/ . 

We started our day walking around Iizaka and trying some local foods. We ate a croquette from a restaurant called "Kawamata-Syokunikuten" and a mochi sweet.

We visited lots of shops around the town and many of the shop owners gave us little treats. Everyone was so nice and excited to be visited by our group of foreigners. I think they were also excited that we were bringing them publicity, because nearly every foreigner tour makes it into the local and prefectural newspapers. 

We bought some ice cream and Iizaka Town souvenirs from her little shop.  

Left to Right: Ken, Myself, Mr. Yasu.

This is Keiko. She was one of the government workers who joined our tour group. She was very nice. You can see our fearless leader, Ken above our heads.

We saw old buildings and shrines and took paper rubbings of some stone markers around town. There are over thirty around the town, and if you collect all the stone rubbings and turn it into the town office, you’ll get a small prize, I hear. We didn’t have enough time for that, we only got about 3-4 of the impressions, but I still had so much fun collecting them.

We were told about some of the older buildings around town, including this one, which I was told wan an Inn and was several hundred years old. Here is my photo, and a photo from the air I got from Google.

After that we stopped in to a local sushi restaurant. We were given a set meal of sushi with some miso soup. It was quite delicious. We spent maybe 45 minutes talking and relaxing while eating our sushi. Mr. Yasu also entertained us with some magic tricks while we were waiting for our lunch.

"Is this your card?"

After we were done with that we all piled into the car and went to a nearby rice field. We were there with maybe 50-70 other people from the community! Everyone claimed about two rows in the rice field.

Waiting to get this party started!

We all loved this car sticker we saw while there.

We were asked to sign a banner for commemorating the event.

My friend Mercedes was nice enough to bring a bandanna for all of us to wear on our heads so we would not get sunburned on our scalps. I had forgotten to bring a hat, so I was so grateful at her thoughtfulness.

We grabbed some rice plants in a big clump and had to pull about three rice stalks apart from the rest of the clump and plant them in the mud. You had to plant them about six inches apart in straight(ish) lines across the rice field.  We were given a pair of socks to wear into the rice field, but it would have been the same if we had gone in barefoot. The mud was so warm and I liked how it squished between my toes!

When I first stepped into the rice field the first thing I noticed were a whole bunch of spiders running on top of the mud and through the shallow water in the field. They freaked me out, especially since I was only wearing socks and had bare legs. They kept running towards me as I made each step into the rice field.  I grabbed a small bamboo stick I was given to help measure distance between plants, and I used it to cover spiders in mud and flick them away from me. Felipe and Cormac were next to me planting rice and they were laughing at how much the spiders were freaking me out.

Here I am using my measuring stick to cover a spider in mud and flick it away. Cormac is laughing at me.

There were also a lot of frogs in the rice fields as well. I thought they were cute and wanted to catch one, but I resisted and left them alone. Soon enough they hopped away and found their own peaceful spots.

My friend Mercedez is super scared of frogs so when she first entered the rice fields and heard and saw the frogs within feet of her, she freaked out and refused to go any farther. She didn’t help plant rice that day, but she helped in other ways. She kept passing out clumps of rice plants to people who finished planting the clumps they had.

Left to right: Mr. Yasu, Katie, Merceded (in back) and Fumiya.

Our friend Fumiya, who is one of the government workers who comes on these tours frequently, is also very afraid of frogs, but Katie was in the field next to him and encouraged him (i.e. “Get in here! If I’m in here, you’re getting in here too!”) to get in the field and plant the rice. I am proud of him that he overcame his fear of frogs so he could plant rice with us.

To the left you can see Fumiya, Katie and Mr. Yasu.

Felipe was having fun throwing mud at my legs, and I reciprocated in kind a few times.

We were asked quite a few times by local news crews if they could take pictures of us. We told them that it would be fine. It was a lot of fun. A few of us made it into the newspaper!

You can see some of the camera crews in the top of this photo.

A job well done.

After we were done planting rice, we sprayed ourselves off with a hose to get most of the mud off. But then Ken took us to a popular onsen on the banks of the river to get ourselves properly cleaned. 

Ken and Mr. Yasu warned us that the water was very hot, especially for foreigners who are not used to bathing in such hot water. Katie, Mercedez and I were the only women from our group to go into the onsen, although we saw a few other women from the rice planting event inside.

After we showered and cleaned off our bodies, we went into the onsen bath. There were two pools, one was around 41 degrees Celsius, and one was around 43 degrees Celsius. It was so hot! None of us could stand it. We sat on the wall between the two pools and only had our legs in the cooler of the two. We were still on a schedule, so we were only able to sit and chat for about ten minutes before we had to get out and meet the others in the front of the onsen. Before I left the pool, however, I got into the 41 degree pool and dipped myself in it up to my neck!  The two other girls were impressed, and they said “Why would you do that? You’re crazy!”  I don’t even know how someone could stand sitting in the 43 degree pool for any length of time. 

We went from the onsen to a large dinner that the owner of the rice field was hosting to thank everyone who had helped plant the rice. We arrived to this beautiful, large house with a beautiful yard with lovely garden paths and flowers everywhere!

Before the dinner started we saw a demonstration of some people making mochi for a soup we would have later.

We were then lead into a small hut to the side of the house that had onsen water being brought up from the ground and was filling up a stone tub. The tub was covered by two large, sheet metal covers. 

Once the covers were moved you could see a basket of eggs sitting in the onsen water. The basket was being suspended by a wooden pole to keep it in the center of the tub and not sitting on the bottom. He told us that the water was around 68 degrees Celsius. I touched the water that was overflowing from the rim of the tub and it was super hot! Not enough to burn instantly, but certainly hot. You would not want to put your hands in that for very long at all.

He told us that he was boiling soft-boiled eggs for tonight’s dinner. It is common practice in Japan to make onsen water, soft-boiled eggs. I like them, it is an interesting food that I was not familiar with back in the states. I just thought there were either raw eggs or hard-boiled eggs, I had never known about soft-boiled.

He told us that because today was a special occasion, he had bought very expensive and nutritious eggs for us.

 After he was done explaining the process by which he makes the eggs, he led us inside to the dining room where there were around fifty people! 

I recognized many faces from rice planting earlier that day. There were also about eight children there. They were excited to talk to us foreigners. They came up to us and started talking to us in the little English they knew. They were also happy to talk to us in Japanese. There was one girl who wanted to talk to us, but once I turned around to start talking to her she got so shy and hid behind her mom and refused to talk. It was so sad. She never got braver, she never came to speak to us.

It was a large dinner of store-bought platters of gyoza, oranges, karaage, and a pickled salad.  We also ate a yummy soup with a large lump of mocha in the bottom, the mocha that they were making earlier. The soup also had small bits of vegetables and mushrooms. We also ate the soft-boiled eggs from the onsen water. We had to crack them into a cup. Cormac was too firm when he was cracking his on the edge of the table, and he broke the egg in half, and it spilled all over him and on part of the floor! He was so embarrassed, but he caused no lasting damage to the floor, so we were all caught up in laughter. It was all pretty good!

At the end of the dinner we were given ten eggs from the onsen. These were the "especially nutritous", expensive eggs. It was a really nice gift for the owner to give.

After the dinner was over it was time to head back to Fukushima City. We gathered outside the Iizaka train station and socialized with all the people in our group including Mr. Yasu. We had to wait a half hour until the next train would arrive so we goofed around outside the station and had so much fun, we also snapped a few pictures!

I really liked Mr. Yasu. He was so nice and genki the entire day. He has such an upbeat attitude and I loved spending time with him. 

Mr. Yasu on the train to the Rice Planting event. He's laughing because this train had a curtain for an onsen in front of the conductor's compartment.

Ken has a blog that he wrote about our rice planting tour on as well. He asked me to write a couple of paragraphs about the even on his blog as well. It is a shorter blurb of my post here. You can find my short post on Ken's blog here. He asked each of us that attended to talk a bit about our experiences. Here is Cormac's. Here is Felipe's (aka Luis). Here is Katie's, although she didn't sign her name. Here is Mercedes', she wrote the longest post. There were some othe posts from the government workers, not just the foreigners. Here is Keiko's post. You can see the other participants' accounts on different pages. 

I was really impressed with what Mr. Yasu said for his experience post.. He said, “No matter where you are in the world, you are pursuing happiness, pleasure. We can share the feeling. I don’t care what is called the language barrier. I am confident we can overcome it.”     I am really touched by his words, and I start to tear up every time I read it.

When the train arrived and we got back to Fukushima, we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. 

This train must have been really old to have these kinds of fans suspended from the train ceiling. 

A group of us decided that we wanted to keep hanging out, so Felipe, Katie, Cormac, Fumiya and I went to a local bar called Hang Loose, a Hawaiian, surfing themed bar.

We spent the night socializing and showing off the strange things we could do with our bodies, like double jointed-ness tricks and weird things. I showed the table my weird elbows that can bend so far backwards that it weirded everyone out. I also showed the table that I am not afraid to touch my eyeball with the pad of my fingers and then move my eye around and touch all parts, including the iris and pupils. Cormac saw that and was able to copy, but everyone else was so grossed out! They cringed and threw their heads back in disgust!  It was so much fun!

Olga joined us later that night, but after a while we were all starting to wear out a bit, so we went our separate ways so we could go get some sleep before meeting the next day.

***UPDATE!   07/2018    ******************************************************
A couple of days later we were featured in the Fukushima Newspaper. We  were in a few more newspapers, but I only had access to one newspaper. 

Wouldn't you know it?! I am just out of frame in this photo!

And Ken went back three weeks and two months after we planted the rice and took photos of the rice fields. For the two month photos he went to raise some scarecrows with some local school children. 

Three Weeks after.

Three Weeks after.

Two Months after. Found on Ken's blog post.

I was not there to harvest the rice that I helped to plant. But I was given photographs of the sake that the rice I helped plant made. The sake is called "Surikamigawa" and is made 100% from local ingredients and water from Fukushima City.  This sake is 100% Fukushima made!  Here are some photos from a party that was thrown in January 2018 to celebrate the creation of this sake. 

(I was first told that this was the sake that was made from our rice, but I don't think that is correct anymore. Either way, here are some photos).

Because I was unable to harvest or attend the sake party, Ken was nice enough to send me a box of Japanese snacks to show gratitude for my help in planting, as well as to say sorry that I missed seeing the fruits of my labor in person. Here are some pictures of the snacks and the cute toy that he sent me. Ken is such a nice man!

I was so touched that he went out of his way to show his appreciation towards me and make me feel welcome, and wanted, and appreciated from across the world. 

***********************************************************************

5/21/2017

The next morning we got to sleep in and have breakfast and just generally be lazy. It was so nice! I would not have believed you if a year ago you had told me that I would spend so much of my year not sleeping in on the weekends.

Cormac and I met up with Felipe, Olga and Jocelyn to go to Koriyama and check out some of the thrift stores so we could find some outfits for the upcoming Fukushima Drag Show.

We spent the day stopping at a couple of thrift stores and eating lunch and socializing. We ended the day at the local Hard Off (second-hand store) and a few of us found pieces of our drag outfits.

Cormac was able to find a nice, rather elegant blue and black (not white and gold,) floor length dress. He’ll look pretty good once we get him some hip pads and bra to give him a figure.

I was able to find a black vest and a white button up shirt with blue and black flowers on it for my drag king look. I am intending to go as a Spicy, Latino, Salsa-Dancer-Man! My drag name is Juan Adik. I think the vest and button up shirt will be a good look. I only need to borrow some dress pants and some shoes from somebody. The drag show is happening on July 1^st. I can’t wait!

Once we found our various outfit pieces, we had to hurry back to Fukushima City, everyone seemed to be busy that night, so there was no socializing that night. Instead I drove back to Minamisoma early and was able to get a good night’s sleep. Such a fantastic weekend!

5/27/17

This morning I had made plans with Sara to go with her with a group of people into Futaba, Fukushima. Inside the exclusion zone. It was an amazing experience, but I am going to give it its own post after this one, and not talk about it here. 

After we got out of the Exclusion Zone and got back to Minamisoma, we ate a late lunch and then we split our separate ways.

I went to Fukushima City to meet up with my friends Katie and Naomi. I met them at a restaurant, but I was too late to eat with them, when I arrived, I saw that my friend Nodoka was there as well. Nodoka is a resident of Fukushima City, she does chiropractic work. She is friends with a lot of people from Fukushima City, and me by extension, because she attends the English conversation get-togethers that happen every other week or so.

From there the four of us went to karaoke. It was so fun! Sadly Nodoka was only able to stay and sing with us for about 45 minutes, but it was still fun to hang out with her before she had to go.

Katie, Naomi and I were still feeling the fun and we decided to stick around and sing karaoke for two hours!

We had a lot of fun, but one thing that I will mention is that I was really proud of myself for one song, "Don’t Rain on my Parade" by Barbara Streisand.

This time last year, I tried to sing it, and I was awful. I couldn’t hit the high notes and I could not sustain the notes for as long as I needed to. It is quite the challenging song, and I wanted to be able to sing it. I wanted to see if I could do it. For the last year I’ve been practicing it.  Usually in the car when I drive to and from Fukushima City.  After months of practice, I finally felt confident that I could sing it.

So that night I decided to test and see if I could do it in front of an audience. And I gotta say, I nailed it! I took that song and beat Barbara over the head with it! I was able to hit the high notes and sustain the long notes, and I nailed the challenging breathing work. If I can toot my own horn a bit, I am proud of myself.

After we finished our evening of karaoke, we went our separate ways. It was quite a fun evening.