Pizza night!

Tonight, Lansen and I made pizza from scratch and it was AWESOME!!! Pix below. The crust was wheat flour and water to make a dough, then kneed in some salt, sugar (optional), and baking powder (I think soda would have been better, but you use what you gots, ya know?), rosemary, and a generous amount of olive oil. I kept asking Lansen how much of each thing to add--he lived in Italy for 4 years, so he oughta know, eh? He kept saying whatever you feel. I cook a lot of things by feel, but I usually use recipies for a framework when trying something knew, and it's been a long time since I made pizza dough...

With a little prodding, Lansen gave a little more direction and I rolled out two beautiful pizza crusts. I contemplated tossing the dough to thin it out (for the full pizza making experience, you know), but since our baking pans were little Japanese rectangles for the little Japanese oven, I just squished and pressed with my palms, knuckles and finger-tips. Over the crust, we brushed an oil, garlic, basil, oregano, and salt mixture (the oil helps seal the dough and keeps it from getting soggy under wet toppings or drying out around the edges). Over the oil, we poured tomato sauce on 3 and left one just oiled. He did 3 with cheese and various toppings. I did one with no cheese and tons of veggies. I've made a similar pizza without cooking the toppings and it came out rather al dente...not my intent, so I stepped over to the frying pan and seared some thinly sliced zucchini (of course! though it's almost the end of the season, I think...), eggplant, onions, carrots, and spinach which I then arranged over the tomato sauce.

Masaru made a delicious potato soup in the pressure cooker (I've never seen soup made in the pressure cooker before), I threw together a salad with red lettuce, iceberg, raisins, grapefruit, and carrots shredded in the slicer machine I love so much, and viola! Feast your eyes on this (quite possibly the best pizza I've ever tasted):

Sushi lessons

What a culinary experience Keiko's farm has provided so far! Not that I'm surprised, since it was my belly that brought me here. :)

Somehow, after near-nightly dinner photos, we neglected to take shots of the sushi we had two days ago! argh!! but it was scrumtous, I assure you. Since I'm vegetarian, Keiko asked me what I put in sushi, so I told her. Avacado, cucumber, carrot (carrot??? she made a shocked face), tofu (tofu???), spinach, green onion, nuts (what!?!)...I really threw her for a loop, but give her credit, man, she let me do what I wanted and she was the first to try it! Pretty good, she said. She asked where I learned to make sushi with a hint of respect in her voice. I shrugged...the back of nori packages? Some from browsing sushi books in bookstores, some from the internet, some from paying attention to sushi chefs and restaurant menus. It was fun sharing sushi knowledge with a Japanese person! And I guess she used to be a sushi chef (is there anything this woman hasn't done???), so she gave me some tips on rolling and slicing.

I usually press my sushi rice firmly onto the nori paper with the rice spatula. Keiko suggested just softly sprinkling it on with damp finger-tips (to avoid excessive sticking). Add your choice of filler ingredients and then roll it up and press it into a square, instead of the circle I'm used to. Let the squares sit seam-side down for few minutes. As it sits, moisture from the rice goes into the nori and it contracts into a circle! cool to see. Then the rice is compressed naturally and each roll becomes a lot faster to make. The slicing I didn't get very good at. It's a sortof gentle upward stroke towards you on the top far side of the roll to cut the nori just a little, then a strong decisive stroke down through the whole roll, like Mr. Miagi teaching Daniel-san how to hammer nails. Wipe the knife (preferably a square-ish near butcher-knife sized blade) on a damp cloth between cuts to prevent sticking. I like my gentler sawing method with a knife dipped in water between strokes better, still...hard to break from what you're used to sometimes.

Weaving lessons continue

I continue to spin wool in my spare time (when I'm not mediating, blogging, or biking around...). I have soaked my spun yarn in warm water and stretched it to dry (the skeins are on the floor to the left next to the weaving book and the mini-rug Keiko made). Next I will string my first loom and attempt a small weaving. I wanted to learn weaving in the native american style, which Keiko can teach(!), but she loaned me a book on it in English (which she can't read, but she can follow the pictures) and I got intimidated...start slow, grasshopper...

More photos

Lansen harvesting bamboo from the neighboring forest.

Lansen in his impromptu workshop. So far, he's made a marginally functional regular flute, a very functional didge, a pan flute set, a rain stick, and an awesome marionette (ok, so that's not musical, but someone's gotta dance, right?).

This is Lansen. WWOOFing was cool before, but it's even more fun now!!

hehe, they let me drive the tractor! Peace, brothers and sisters!

This is the onion drying rack Masaru, Jean, and I built when I first got to the farm. It doubles as monkey bars, it's that strong.

Pensive reflections

We were rockin' out to the Beatles while washing dishes this morning (right?? these guys love the Beatles...the 11 year old guest who visits during the week in the summer studied them in school!), and I looked out the kitchen window, past the old, dilapidated outdoor latrine into the neighbor's bamboo forest.

I errupted into laughter--you know my belly laugh...something like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman? This is my life. I'm washing tea cups and rice bowls and serving plates and chop sticks and spoons and frying pans and listening to the beatles at 9AM after the morning harvest and preparing the food...

I think of my friends back home, tied to their jobs, debts, fears, loves, stuff...I think many of them would love to be here. How many people have told me they admire my courage for striking out on my own and following my heart and trusting the universe to provide along the way. I am so fascinated to watch the thought seeds planted in my mind years ago coming to fruition in the most unlikely ways...learning to weave, make bagels, share music, meditate, calm my mind, use my body, teach yoga, be a healer. Studying AP European history in high school, I wanted to be a Renaissance woman--to speak 5 languages fluently, be a master craftsman, carpenter, painter, sculptor, geographist, mathematician...I thought it was impossible, but I'm perceived as the everything woman here.

A few mornings ago, I ripped out a piece of the thin ply-wood wall and replaced it with a corrigated plastic roofing panel while the other american wwoofer made french toast out of the cinnamon raisin challa we'd baked the night before. Keiko and friends got a good laugh: the woman carpenter and the man cook. I also sing, cook, speak a little Thai, teach yoga, and pretty much any farm chore they've given me, I've done: daijobe, mon dai nai...everything ok, no problem/no worries. :)

Anyone can do this.

Anyone can do this.

I believe.

Awesome Japanese English

At the 100 yen shop today I found a couple cool Japanese English tidbits:

on a tiny notebook (ie 2"x4") with a pink and red and black and white striped pokadot pattern, it says

Sensing a touch of love.
When you shine ultimately.

lol. I bought this to be my Reiki distance healing notebook. Please let me know if you would like me to write your name in my book. This way, I can send distance healing to everyone at once by giving reiki to the book. Awesome.

Some postcards I found with little doves and bamboo pictures on the cover says

Are you happy?
Sometime it's better just to let go.

and finally (my favorite), on a tiny spiral note book (think 2.5"x4") with a red cover and big silver letters it says Super sparkle, and in tiny silver letters,

Sparkle Soul

I study for a future aim every day and
do an effort to think about it. Believe
a lucky sparkle fantastically.

I laughed and laughed. Today at Lunch, the other american wwoofer and I were discussing the grammar differences between English and Japanese (it is sooooooo nice to be able to discuss again! We can use words like juxtapose and ubiquitous and bonafide (and fo shiz...) and trust that the other probably understands what we're talking about! What a blessing). In English, the fundamental sentence structure goes subject, verb, object. In Japanese, it's subject, object, verb, with a bunch of filler words that mean something to locals but seem to change randomly to me at this point. I don't know yet where to put adjectives (maybe at the end?), but I can now string together a few basic questions correctly and everyone around me gets very excited. It's so cute to see their eyes light up when I ask what the cat's name is (there are 4 and I keep forgetting one of them...).

But basically, a sentence like
Yesterday, I visited a big, beautiful, house in the country.
translated into Japanese and direct translated back becomes something like
I yesterday by the country big beautiful house visited.

No wonder they wind up with phrases like Oh, it's convenience! and Do an effort to think about. or Believe a lucky sparkle fantastically...

Laughter is a blessing to the world, eh?

Bread for breakfast

This morning,we made bagels and chiapatta with eggplant/pepper stir-fry and curried potatoes. We also shared the last of the 4 challa loaves--delicious home-baked bread morning. Then we weeded and harvested and transplanted in the cool morning drizzle, had pot-stickers from scratch for lunch (most with meat and some reserved veggie for me!), and took the afternoon off to go shopping at the 100 yen shop (aka dollar store).

I think next week I may try to start weaving the wool I've been spinning. This is so awesome... and the farm owner said as long as I keep giving her foot massages, I can stay as long as I want! ;) Right now, another american wwoofer is making a bunch of bamboo instruments--so far we have a didge I can play pretty ok, a rainstick, and some improvised marimbas. We're planning a concert. Keiko's Farm Orchestra. Poi spinning will also be involved, and maybe some juggling? Or puppeteering?? It's gonna be awesome...don't know yet who we're gonna play for. Maybe the handicapped group that helps out?

Photos of the food!

A pretty typical dinner. Everyone gets their own rice bowl and soup bowl and a little plate. We eat family style, which means you just dip your chop sticks into the big serving plates in the middle and pile a bite or two onto your little plate or into your rice bowl. There is a distinct flow to this way of eating. It feels like being on a freight train...no one eats until everyone is on board, in the beginning, it's polite to hold back a bit, a few bites here, a few bites there, contemplating the taste and texture. I tend to go mmmmmmm, oishi! a lot, but I think it's more polite to just enjoy in silence. How much you take of a given dish shows whether you like it or not. After the initial tasting, there's kindof a shoveling momentum that builds up as the meal-train gets going. As the food dwindles, there's an energetic shift and everyone begins to take bites more slowly, eventually devolving into occassional listless picking. The last few bites are offered around (whether you want something or not, it's polite to offer it to another (it's rude to just take the last few bites...possibly worse to take the secondto last bite, cuz that forces someone else to take the last if they are still hungry. This is a bummer) and wait hopefully for someone to offer to you). Then the tea is poured (we drink tea 5 times a day! so weird...) as the last stragglers finish their food and no one gets up until everyone is finished with their tea. All the together time took some getting used to. A few days ago, I didn't feel like drinking anymore black tea or eating anymore sweets and I wanted to meditate for a while, so I asked to take afternoon tea in my room. Keiko said ok (well, she said "er, er, er" emphatically while nodding her head), so I did. When I came out, 3 people approached me and asked if I was ok with sincere concern. The other American WWOOFer and I decided we need to put up some hammocks so we can rest at tea time where they can still see us. The collective energy is so tangible here...

I digress, here's the food:

A feast for 11 farmers:

Solstice celebration! Challa and stuffed zucchini a la Mare :)

Our happy farming family:

Tough times? Try WWOOFing!

In two weeks here at the farm, I've spent less than $20--$13 in luxury groceries (chocolate, raisins, extra rice crackers, fruit, etc...) and $4 for "dinner" at AMPM (yes, they have AMPM here! and 7-11, which sortof rhymes in Japanese, too: hachi-ju ichi (almost as cool as jet sip-et in Thai! though they just called it seven eleven, which disapointed me)). It was about $10 for the train to get here and maybe $2-3 to call from the lame public phones to coordinate a ride from the train station.

If the global shit hits the fan, so to speak, I think working here on this organic farm is a pretty sweet place to be! We eat so well...fresh organic veggies, eggs picked the day before, bread from an organic bakery across town we trade veggies with, rice from the farm owner's friend...lunch today was home-made udon noodles and tempura. It was amazing.

Japanese traditional Udon noodles:
1) mix the desired amount of flour with 40% more water (ie 500 grams flour and 200 grams water) and a pinch of salt.
2) kneed until dough is supple and fairly dry.
3) let dough ball rest for about 30 minutes in one bowl covered by another, then both covered by a damp cloth.
4) roll out the dough gently on a floured surface, like a pie crust
5) dust with starch powder (we used potato starch) and fold like a z-rest ground pad to the length of your knife
6) let rest again under a newspaper (or maybe a dry cloth?) for maybe 30 minutes? (it was unclear if this step was necessary, or just for convenience while we rolled out the other dough ball for the second batch)
7) slice to desired thickness (traditional Udon is about 1/4" maybe?)
8) unfold noodles and dust with more starch, set aside.
9) boil a big pot of water.
10) shake excess starch off the noodles and drop them into the pot.
11) stir with extra-long cooking chopsticks and boil about 6-10 minutes.
12) take them out of the water and serve hot or cold, in soup or plain.
13) enjoy! (we dipped ours in a bowl of diluted soy sauce (at least I think that's what it was))

Yum.

Lessons from a week on the farm

So far at Keiko's farm, I've harvested zucchini, potatoes, green beans, lettuce, strawberries (leftovers after season), mulberries, spinach, rubarb, cucumbers, Japanese radish, cabbage, and broccoli. I've packaged spinach, greenbeans, potatoes, and onions for customers. I've learned to card and spin wool into thread using my fingers, the top of my thigh, a drop spindle, a navaho spindle (who knew I would learn to weave with a native american tool in Japan!), and a sleeping beauty-esque spinning machine. I can speak a little (scochi!) more Japanese than a week ago and I've learned some cool new ways to cook stuff (they saute their veggies in sake a lot, which is a bummer for me), like coating the bottom of a frying pan with finely chopped cabbage and steaming it for a few minutes then cracking eggs on top individually, adding water and covering for a few more minutes. You wind up with quasi-basted eggs in thier own little cabbage birds nest. Top with a yummie sauce (we used some brown stuff in a bottle with pictures of veggies on it...soy sauce would probably also be good, or maybe holandaise sauce, if you're a fancy pants...).

I also helped build an onion drying rack, put up 100m of electric fencing around a rice field, dug up and helped change about 20' of clogged drain pipe at the house, watched a combine machine harvest wheat, taught three yoga classes, gave three foot massages, and tonight I taught two woofers and a houseguest (she does basically what we do, but she pays Keiko!) wool spinning 101. Fun!

Stepped on a nail!

This weekend, 50 of Keiko's organic food customers (as best as I can understand, Keiko distributes her food directly to customers--maybe like a CSA? She rarely goes to public market) came to the farm to plant the rice. Many farmers do this by machine, now, but Keiko still does it by hand. What a cool process...at least I assume it was, because a few days ago while cleaning up the farm before they arrived, I stepped on a rusty nail and it went through my rubber boots! yikes. Fortunately (thanks to the cat that bit me in Thailand...), my teatnus vaccine is current and I washed the small puncture right away (regretting leaving my irrigation syringe behind...), applied some anti-biotic cream, and bandaged it with my second favorite traveler's friend (right after my sarong (because of course I travel with a towel!)), duct tape!

Keiko saw my bandage and made me take it off so she could see. She wanted to cut it open a little more to squeeze out the possible infection and I said nononononono!! I had already squeezed it and washed it...it's good. Mondainai--no problem. Everyone else tried to scare me by showing how big my foot was gonna swell to, but I stuck to my guns: no Japanese farm-style surgery for me! Too bad I punctured my foot the day before rice planting...I took the day off while everyone else finished up. The next day, I did get to walk around in the paddy with one barefoot and one foot in my borrowed big rubber boots to help install an electric fence. Wet and squishy for about 6 inches, but then solid clay soil. very difficult to walk in in boots, no problem barefoot.

The fence is to keep the agaimo (sp?) ducks in the paddy. They arrived today, and the babies are sooooo cute! They will eat the worms and bugs that would otherwise eat the rice plants, and after the rice harvest, Keiko and friends will eat them! It all goes round in a circle...

Day Off #1 photos

Me and Yoniko, just chillin', peace-style, you know! (Representing the California Certified Organic Farmers! Thanks, UC Santa Cruz Earth Day, 2002!)

Mare struggles to count to ten in my new language...ichi, ni, san, shi, go...uh...roku! nana, hachi, kyu, ju! yippee!

Cycling around town on my day off, the fireman forman yelled something to me three times before I figured out he wanted to talk to me. I stopped and we chatted for a bit. Three other excited firemen came out of the station woodwork, smiling, but a little disapointed that I couldn't speak Japanese. We had a fun chat and they let me take a ton of pictures. Here's one with me trying to look as bad-a#$ as they do! lol

Tea time with Alex, a German guy who WWOOFed at Keiko's farm in the past. Notice the eyes I taped to the tea pot cuz it reminds me of a penguin...

Post shaved head in a borrowed tee-shirt, doing one of the things I do best...My cookies are very popular! These were zuccini, potato, onion, curry cookies with no sugar. A little chewy, but still delicious. (and handy, as zuccini is in season and I work on a farm...)

life and death

There is a lot more killing in farming than I realized...I ripped out a whole row of perfectly good strawberries a coulple days ago, just because there were too many. Millions of ants are now rebuilding their homes because of me...I was mindless and set my hand down for balance while I did something else and they clearly communicated their displeasure to me by biting the crap out of my left wrist. oops. I still have the itchy welts to show for it. and then I tilled under a bunch of perfectly good lettuce...bummer.

On the up side, I shaved my head to 10 mm yesterday and I feel so free! pix soon.

Farm animals

Just chillin', you know.

Baby goats are soooooo cute!!

Before shearing this past april. Bummer I missed that event, but maybe I can wash the wool before I leave?

Me and the babies.

Haiku realization

I was singing a very logical song today while washing potatoes in the rain, and I realized something:

Singing in the rain
what a glorious feeling
I'm happy again.

It's a haiku!! How cool is that? :)

I think farmers must be excellent meditators. I thought so in Thailand watching the shepards out in the fields with their cows, but now that I'm part of a working farm in Japan, I'm pretty sure. There's just so much time of being in the present moment, just with what you're doing. It's a great training to watch the mind. Who needs zazen when you can harvest potatoes? lol...

Let the WWOOFing begin!

I have arrived at my first wwoof farm after last night at my first couch surf. Nice so far. The couchsurf was in the north of Tokyo in a place I would not otherwise have visited. The woman owner runs an English school with tea and conversation every saturday evening and I felt compelled to be there. It was fun. I got my first Kanji lesson (Japanese script), which I've already mostly forgotten. This morning I woke up at 4AM, just before the trains began to run for the day (one drawback of awesome train service is living next to the tracks...), and decided to stay up and start my day with some yoga, meditation, and soba noodles at home. Then I set out around 6am to try to find a temple to meditate at, but no luck, so I just walked. Around 7:30 (the only Japanese people I saw at this hour were out walking thier dogs, pretty much. A few heading to work...), I found a shrine/temple looking building, so I wandered over. The gate was open and I went in and saw a 20' tall statue of the Bodisattva of compassion. The building was locked, but from the porch I could see a bunch of tightly packed grave monuments, granite stone blocks stacked together with wooden paddle-shaped sticks sticking up in back scripted in kanji. I assume well-wishes for the dead?

Towards the end of my circuit around the grounds, I found a ginko biloba tree (they are everywhere here!) 4' in diameter!! That was awe-inspiring.

Then I walked over the bridge across the train tracks that divde this part of town and into the main park where I sat by the pond in the zen garden and tried to learn from the fish and the turtles and the birds. A man cycled up to me and we shared a few minutes of conversation in broken bits and pieces of each other's languages. Pretty cool.

I walked back to my room at the english school, ate some more, packed up and headed for the train. I am far enough from Tokyo in a small enough town that the train stations on the ticket price chart are no longer labled in English. Fortunately, my next stop is a central one, and they are in bigger boxes and I recognized the script on my English and Japanese language Tokyo train map (which is a ridiculously useful piece of paper), so I got that one right. One train from Kura-Utawa to Omiya, change train lines and go to Kawagoe, change train lines and go to Ogasaki (I think that's the wrong city, but it starts with an O...) and stay on that line but change trains to go to Obusuma (it's a pretty small station towards the end of the line, so not many of the trains run this far. We sat in the train for about 10 or 15 minutes while 2 or 3 other trains from Tokyo came in and people trickled onto our train.

At Obusuma station, I called my WWOOF host to confirm my ride and she said she's never heard of Obusuma. yikes, what??? I slowly realize as we communicate and try to sort out our confusion that she speaks a lot more English than she seemed to when I called her to check in from Kawagoe 90 minutes ago...it dawns on me: I dialed the wrong number! This is my couch surf host from last night! duh...a couple minutes and a dollar later, I dial the right number, drop another dollar coin into the phone and connect with my ride. Huzzah!

A few people arrive at the station to buy tickets or ask a question or get dropped off by loved ones and I stand and greet them expectantly and briefly feel like a fool (or an ignoramus, anyway) each time. A few minutes pass, but not more than 15, and two exuberantly smiling people drive up, wave and hop out of their car to greet me. They wear muddy boots and shoes and have dirty clothes and I like them both immensely right away. We re-arrange the back seat of their little boxey SUV/minivan (think of a Honda Element put through the Honey I Shrunk the Kids machine), drop my daypack in the back, and we're off. I can't remember anything to say, so I pull out my Lonely Planet Japanese phrase book (LAX bookstore, baby--only $8 new...I didn't think that was too bad) and study it carefully for about 30 seconds. I figure the driver is the farm owner, Keiko, but I don't know the guy in back, so I ask his name in Japanese. They both laugh (that's what I was hunting through my little book for?) and I find out Masaku is a 17 year-old half-Japanese, half-Nepalese guy who lives at Keiko's farm. He speaks pretty good English and I get very excited. From Keiko's emails, I was expecting to learn a lot of Japanese really fast or sink in the tempestous sea behind the language barrier. Masaku's language skills are a pleasant surprise.

Before I know it we're at the farm, Masaku marvels at how small and light my pack is (hehe-oh yeah!), shows me to my house and introduces me to my housemate, Jean, a Taiwanese woman about my age who also speaks very good english. Awesome.

Jean shows me around the house, including the outdoor washing machine and indoor pit toilet (go figure), then takes me to the kitchen to see the schedule and where the food is. I cook myself some lunch--cabbage, carrots, eggs, oil, vinegar, and curry with 3 slices of different kinds of whole-grain bread, about as good as what I bake at home! Yum. During lunch, I meet one of the other farm workers and we chat and visit using her moderate English skills and an electronic dictionary (maybe I won't feel so language impaired after all!).

Turns out I arrived smack in the middle of lunch break and chores start again at 2:30. Jean and I are to begin the afternoon by watering the chickens and collecting the eggs, so we pedal over to the hen houses, which are on Keiko's property down the road about 5 mintues on classic Japanese bikes: single-speed girl's bikes with racks on the back and baskets in front. Did I mention there are 700 chickens? Yeah, that's a lot...

Then we cut cucumber leaves to try to stop a tiny-bug infestation, then we weeded the strawberry patch (it's just past strawberry season, so Jean said I could help myself! I liked that job.), and finally we put the sheep into their night pens and fed them kitchen scrap vegetables and fermented sheep feed? I don't know what it was...corn, rice, or soy byproduct, maybe?

Keiko and another farm worker prepared dinner and we came in to help set the table, make tea, and partake. Family style. yum.

After dinner I stretched a little (much needed!), helped Jean with some translation stuff, and gave Keiko a reflexology massage. She fell asleep, so I think she enjoyed it. lol.

Thus concludes this entry chapter in my journey into WWOOFing in Japan.
Blessings!

First full day

This morning I woke up at about 5am I think, but I couldn:t find my clock, so I stayed in bed until about 6...got up, warm shower (step up from Thailand in that regard!), and off to see the local temple. I meditated for about an hour in one of the halls. The sweet scent of the bamboo tatami mats was a nice sensory input to sit with. Trying to remember to stay in Big Mind, Big Heart and just let it all unfold.
The scale of the temples here is huge, yet somehow the altars seem less austentatious. There is just as much gold on the altars, but the statues are much more subdued--generally about 3` high?, bronze and often contained within their own curtained box instead of 8` high, gold plated, front and center.

Perhaps tonight I:ll go soak in my first onsen (hot springs bath)? Something just happened to my left foot and it really hurts...might also be self-reiki time...

I'm here!

I've arrived safely! much love all. Internet is very expensive at the airport (10 cents a minute!), so more soon.