About Me

maker, creative, living lightly, local, craft, minimalism, and taking joy in the small things

Monday 24 September 2007

Geoff comes to Hagi and gets to ride a Combine Harvester


Today Geoff and I had to get up early to be at Sun Life at 10am, to meet the Japanese class, and the teachers, for our rice harvest. We drove for about 20 minutes, and came to Nishimura sensei’s rice fields – we were apparently still in Hagi. I’m not sure how many fields he had – somewhere between 2 and 6, 4 of them were at the sprouting stage, and the other 2 were ready to be harvested. So we were given hand held scythes, and instructed to clear a 2.5m square in each corner – then a combine harvester came along and did the field!

After the combine harvester had done the first field we had a BBQ – we made onigiri (rice balls), and then bbq’ed meat and vegetables. At some stage Nishimura sensei pulled out a fishing rod, and caught a tiny little fish – maybe 6 inches long. I’m sure in Australia you would have to throw it back, but here they packed some salt in its gills and threw it on the grill, and we watched it die. The worst part was that no one actually ate the fish – which I had assumed was the aim.

After the BBQ the combine harvester was back and we each had a ride on it – we actually had to drive it – around the 2nd field.

1 comment:

Erin said...

Thanks for that. You've successfully put to rest any remote possibility that I might ever eat fish.