Setsukeian 3: 行って来ます！

Our last day at Setsukeian was a tearful one.  Kei-san burst into the computer room while we were still clicking away, hoping to make a job appear, only to scowl, then admonish us in English, "Hey!  Good WWOOFers."  He laughed, then closed the door, leaving us severely confused.  It turned out that he had wanted us to sign the Setsukeian guest book.  We had learned to read his moods well in the previous weeks: when he frowned, which was often, he is an imposing figure indeed, full of skepticism and irritation.  When he smiles, though, it's a thing of beauty...

Oh, no wait, that's me I'm thinking of.

On our final evening, Kei-san taught us a couple of traditional Japanese New Year's games, which can best be described as "like pin the tail on the donkey, but with faces" and "exactly Parcheesi."  I won.

It was hard to say goodbye to Kei-san and Setsu-san.  Setsu-san, despite having to do all of the farm's domestic chores on her own, with neither help nor appreciation from Kei-san, is a fantastic individual.  She can juggle, she keeps a loom in the closet (for emergency weaving), she makes her own clothes, she keeps the farm running with a smile, and she kept singing some AKB48 song and doing the official AKB dance, which may have tied that teacup bunny for Cutest Thing Evar.  When one of us (and then the other) fell ill, it was farm policy for Setsu-san to give us a full-body massage.  I laid on the floor cushions hesitantly, then gasped as fingers rapidly popped and stretched spots that I didn't know my body had.  Setsu-san has the strongest hands of anyone I've ever met, and I would put money on her in a Thumb War any day.

It was hard reconciling just how relentlessly kind and cheerful Setsu-san is with the somewhat crummy deal she seems to get.  One night over dinner, she explained to us that she really didn't like cooking until they started to get WWOOFers at the house.  Kei-san interrupted at this point, explaining between mouthfuls of miso soup that Setsu-san likes cooking for appreciative eaters; at their home in Tokyo, she would cook every meal for the family, and never would she get so much as a word of compliment.  Jenn and I wondered at Kei-san's simultaneous awareness of his wife's underappreciation and decision not to do anything to fix that.

When it came time for us to leave, Kei-san took us down to the bus stop in the truck first thing in the morning.  Setsu-san first shook our hands, then, incredibly she hugged us goodbye.  We hugged her back, trying to summon the words in Japanese for a situation we had never encountered before; hugs are rare enough in Japan that many of Jenn's students wrote identical essays describing how moved they were by getting hugs from their host families during exchange programs when their own parents had never hugged them before.  Now Setsu-san was shouting "Come back soon!" and waving goodbye to us as the house slowly disappeared in the rear-view mirrors.  Jenn held her own hand to keep herself from crying.  Kei-san explained to us on the drive that he would also be shouting farewells to us until we could no longer see him from the bus, but that we should wave back anyway.  When the bus pulled away, we heard his voice shouting farewells to us until we could no longer see him down the mountain road.

What did we learn at Setsukeian?  Among other things, we learned that hard work (contrary to popular assumptions) won't kill us, though it will make us kinda irritable.  We also reaffirmed what we'd already known: that Japanese people are some of the nicest, most welcoming folks in the world.  Sure, we had some moments of culture shock, moments where if we had to listen to Kei-san complain about how kids today are so for shit, they don't even known how to use chopsticks (I mean, really?), we might've lost it.  We continue to thank our lucky stars every day that we weren't born female in Japan.  But for all of that, we still feel lucky to be a part of this family.  This crazy, strict, conservative, 500-member family.  And we will be back someday.