Pasar Moon: A Love Story

It wasn't immediately apparent that we had arrived at our destination.  The yellowing afternoon light was cast over a strange collection of buildings and materials, rusty iron bars, long bamboo poles, all overgrown with ivy and flowering vines.  The brightly-painted murals led us to believe that Google Maps hadn't misled us, that this was the (farm? cafe? concert venue?) whatever-it-was we were looking for, but it seemed that no one was home.  Sunburnt, dripping with sweat, almost certainly filthy from days on the road, we dismounted and wheeled our bikes around this odd place aimlessly.  "すみません！" we shouted occasionally, hoping to attract someone's attention.

We leaned our bikes against a wooden platform and entered one of the buildings.  Our eyes dazzled from the afternoon sun, we could barely see into the house.  As we walked in, we heard a soft "Hello." Removing our sunglasses, we saw a thin, dark-skinned man with shaggy gray hair sitting on a beat-up couch.

"Hello," we replied.  He looked back down at his computer and coughed quietly.  Shrugging, we took off our helmets and sat around the table, following his lead.  After a few beats we introduced ourselves.  He confirmed that this was, in fact, Pasar Moon, our WWOOF host for the next week and a half, and introduced himself as Aki.

"Would you prefer to speak in Japanese?" Jenn asked Aki.

His eyes widened.  "Can you speak Japanese?"

We nodded, and he slumped back even further.  "Whew, what a relief, that's much easier!" he sighed.

Over the next hour or so, he and his wife, Natsu, explained a little about Pasar Moon to us.  Practically, Pasar is a cafe, campground, and concert space, holding a music festival every August and opening for business whenever customers happened by from Masuda or Hiroshima.  Conceptually, it's a space for people to experience the natural beauty of the mountains and the seaside, and a place for artists to be able to produce art freely (artists and musicians stay and eat for free, Aki told us, and they take all of the earnings from the concerts).  For most of the year, the two of them live in a little house in Java, but for the summer they return to Shimane to re-open Pasar.  We had arrived just a day after they had, so there would be much work to be done to get the place customer-ready.

"Oh!" I suddenly remembered, "I have our WWOOFer permits right here."

"Nah, I don't need them," Aki told us.

Natsu-san went on to tell us about our duties: sleep until we're not tired, breakfast is whenever, usually around 10:00, and then we'd be asked to help with whatever cleaning or gardening needed to be done.  "Take a rest whenever you feel like it, and if you don't like doing a certain task, just do something else instead," she told us.

Oh yeah, we thought at each other, we're gonna fit in here just fine.  Quite a chance from our last WWOOF experience, to be sure.

The sun began to set over the coast, and the four of us walked the 20 meters to the beach to watch.  We stood in the campground (in which there was a sign, "This is everyone's park"), took pictures of it, and breathed in the early summer air.

Over Natsu-san's spectacular curry, we discussed our instruments.  It was decided after some deliberation that we would have a concert under the stars on the next full moon.  We helped with the dishes, pitched our tent on a bed of weeds, and fell fast asleep, dreaming about the old accordion propped up in a corner in the living room.