Pasar 3: Showtime

The appointed hour had come.  The accordion was found collecting dust at Pasar had been repaired, the cafe had been set up for business, we'd sent off our documents to apply for our work visa, and most importantly, the flag was finished.

Design by Jenn Thomas of Jenn Thomas from Jenn Thomas/Jenn Thomas, featuring Jenn Thomas

Modelled by Jenn Thomas

Under the full moon, Jenn and I set up our instruments on one of the three empty stages.  We'd spent the day rehearsing and dragging wooden furniture back and forth across the yard, finally determining the arrangement best suited to polite appreciation and/or dancing on tables.  By 7:00, nobody had turned up.  We started on the beers that we'd brought to share with our hosts.  By 7:30, the starting time for our concert, we were still alone and on our second beer.

Eventually, our audience arrived: a dozen or so married women from the neighborhood, bearing snacks and bottles of wine.  Fortunately, that didn't stop them from taking advantage of the Pasar Moon kitchen, which turned out curries and one delicious pizza after another.  Jenn and I took the stage for our first duo concert.  Under the circumstances, our old band's name, Raku 3, seemed inappropriate, so we went by Jenn's stage name, Jenny Dreadful.  It felt good to be performing again; after all, we'd carted our instruments around the previous 1,000 miles, so we might as well get some use out of them.

The show, sadly, was lackluster.  This was our first time performing in nearly a year, and though we'd spent the past few months jamming by the roadside, we weren't quite as polished as we would usually like.  The audience was pretty different from our usual crowd of friends appreciative old drunken bachelors, too, having turned up more to hang out with one another than to see us.  Still, we gave it our best go, and the contributions to our nagezen basket (literally, "thrown money") were generous, except for the person who gave us a wedge of cheese.  Despite the protests of Aki, who was oddly absent from this event except while we were playing, we deposited all of our takings right into Pasar's donation box.  He told us about how Pasar is meant to be a space to support artists and musicians, and that the usual policy was to comp all non-WWOOFing artists their room and board.  The money was ours, he insisted, not the venue's.  When he left to get a cigarette, we dropped the cash into the box; after all, we had just found a job, and places like Pasar need support themselves.

When all of the pizza had been eaten and our donations had been counted, Natsu stood before her friends and patrons to explain the bill situation.  From this year, she said, Pasar would not set any prices for its food or drinks, but would instead rely wholly on Love Donations.  Whatever the customer was moved to pay for what they received, that would be what they should pay.  If ever there is a customer who can't afford a dime, then their meal should be eaten with clear conscience.  "Japanese people are very bad at this because they're so shy," she had told us earlier, "but this is important to our idea of Pasar Moon."  They listened patiently, receptively (despite Aki's doubts) as she spoke, and when she finished, they all contributed heartily to the box.  More beer was opened in celebration, and we retired to our room to pack up our instruments.

As I flipped the lightswitch, I caught a glimpse of something dark and thin scuttle out from behind Jenn's pillow.  My heart sank, as I knew instinctively what it was.  I calmly put down the ukulele, told Jenn to step back, and screamed my little heart out: "Mukade!"

Attention, current or future mortal enemies: if you could just skip ahead to the picture of a ducky, that would be great.  See you there!

Centipedes are my greatest fear in the world, and are my persistent theological proof that we are not living in the best of all possible worlds (additional proofs involve the non-existence of a Spider-man or -men).  On the rare occasions in which I've encountered them, I've turned into a squealing, useless bag of slop (more than usual, even).  Fortunately, in this case, Natsu-san heard my cry and ran to the rescue with a cup of hot water and a set of tongs.  She plucked the foot-long, writhing black nightmare up and dropped it into the water, where it danced about in fury before falling into a very convincing faux-death.  As far as I know, it still lives at Pasar, feigning death and waiting for me to return.  She told me then that there had been several mukade spotted that day, one of them having stung Aki on the leg mere hours before.  Perhaps it had something to do with the full moon, she suggested.  Maybe they just didn't like the show.

We took what was left of our beers into the living room, leaving the party to collect our thoughts.  Jenn rubbed my back and reassured me that that was probably the last centipede anywhere in the whole world, and that there was no chance of another one living under my pillow and waiting until we fell asleep to lay eggs in my eyeballs.  Natsu came to find us before too long, and saw me in a daze.

"Are you in shock?" she asked.  I nodded limply, and explained that I would probably be unable to sleep that night or any other night.  She nodded back solemnly. "OK, let's get drunk.  Do you drink tequila?"  

We spent the next hour or so trading recipes for tequila shots and discussing our lives.  What we spoke of I won't reveal here, suffice to say how stricken I was for the first time at the appropriateness of their names ("Natsu" meaning "summer," "Aki" meaning "autumn"; Natsu is in her thirties, Aki in his fifties).  If there were any other mukade that night, I didn't notice; Natsu's home remedy was extremely effective.

Setsukeian 2: A Day in the Life

Pictured at right: the guest house where we slept.  Not pictured: coffee.

At 6:30 every morning, we awoke just in time to hit snooze and sleep until 6:55, which left us precisely enough time to throw our futons into the closet and stumble downstairs to report for duty.  We were expected to be ready at 7:00 sharp to undertake our vital morning tasks: while one of us would help Setsu-san in the kitchen and begin the lengthy table-setting ritual, the other would clean the toilet and feed the chickens.

Now, you may mock me for this, gentle reader, but I'm a little afraid of chickens.  I will point out, as I often have, that from the drumstick down they are in fact dinosaurs.  Still, I developed quite a rapport with these two chickens, especially since Kei-san let me use a giant stick to fend them away (to my delight, I found that I had already learned the word for "defense stick," bo, not during my lengthy study of Japanese but in my lengthier study of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).  The pair looked pretty lonely in their big coop all alone, especially when Kei-san told us of their tumultuous life history that involved their mates being exsanguinated in weasel attacks and injuries sustained during sex, which explained why the rooster and hen were kept in separate pens.

By 7:30, breakfast was ready, and it consisted unvaryingly of toasted white bread, a salad frequently made of the previous night's leftovers, miso soup, and mayonnaise and jellied seaweed (for the bread).  Please note the complete absence of coffee.  We four ate family style in the dining room, Kei-san having arrived from his morning visit to the neighborhood temple just in time to dig in (funny how his luck always held out on that front).  Indeed, we felt very much like family during our two weeks on the farm, right down to lively conversations over meals and frequent scoldings for doing our chores improperly.  These familial feelings only waned when we thought of how we were Setsukeian's 482nd and 483rd WWOOFers respectively; we found ourselves irrationally jealous of our 481 siblings, though we were also comforted with the knowledge that there was no way we could be the most inept WWOOFers they'd ever had.

When breakfast was finished and the dishes were washed, we hurriedly changed into our "working wear" to get ready for our first three-hour shift at 8:30.  Our working wear was no less crummy than our "room wear," you understand, as our glamorous life of bike touring only left us room for three shirts apiece.  Still, Kei-san was adamant, and when he would see us sneaking up to our bedroom for a quick nap in our working wear, he would chastise us heartily, claiming that we would dirty up our room with outside-dirt.

Here Harry is heartily enjoying one of our many break times.

We labored from 8:30 until noon, with a half-hour break for tea and sweets at 10.  Our tasks varied from day to day, but they were always oddly gendered, something for which we were unprepared.  While I was sent to cut the crass, hack bits of wood into smaller bits of wood, whack rice into giant globs of mochi, or do other heavy lifting, Jenn was put to work sorting rice, sorting beans, kneading bread, or even sewing applique.  Being enlightened 21st-century folk, we had figured that every WWOOFer would be put to hard labor; it was difficult being cool with the assumption that I would be stronger and fitter than Jenn purely based on my possession of a certain quantity of testicles (which, frankly, were pretty unhelpful for most tasks).

I did this with my testosterone.

Lunch was eaten outside during good weather, probably to avoid having us change back into our room wear in order to help Setsu-san in the kitchen.  It was always delicious and extremely starchy, usually either udon soup with rice, ramen with rice, or grilled rice balls.  By the time we finished with lunch, we had just enough time to pass out from caffeine withdrawal before getting back to work for the afternoon.  I was put again to the hard stuff: harvesting field greens, building a playground out of wood, planting rice, spitting, etc..  Meanwhile, Jenn was weeding the garden or sorting more rice, all the while thinking of all the books she read as a child that featured 19th-century farm girls doing needlework and longing to be outside with the boys.

Traditionally gendered divisions of labor make Jenn FURIOUS.

From 5 until 6:30, we were allowed to take showers and use the Internet, though not usually at the same time.  Of course, since by this point we were frantically looking for jobs online, our rest time usually was squandered on scouring job boards and other nonsense.  The rest of the evening was spent helping Setsu-san in the kitchen (not that she needed any real help), eating her amazing meals, generally being impressed with her, and then passing the fuck out at 8:30.

This routine was always the same save for special events such as the appearance of a corgi-sized tanooki that bounded down the path and under the house in broad daylight.  One night, the guest house was reserved by customers, visitors who had WWOOFed at Setsukeian years before and had since gotten married and had a baby.  The promise of a change, of visitors coming, filled us with bizarre excitement, and again we felt connected to all of the books we had read about 19th-century American farmsteaders.  We left the farm only once, our holiday, to go into Kyoto to visit the monthly flea market that commemorates the death of Kobo Daishi, a revered figure in Zen Buddhism who apparently had a fondness for good deals and fried food.  Of course, we were free to go out whenever we wanted, but the nightlife of Nantan was a little much for our blood:

"On break/vacation."

The main drag of Nantan City.

Shimanami Kaido 2: 10% Grade, 99% Sucky

I yawned, the morning sun falling softly through the tent’s little plastic window.  It was warm this morning, and calm.  What a beautiful day today would be, I thought, unzipping the door, a day that GAH AGAIN!

I blinked, rubbed the sleep from my eyes with one hand while trying not to fall and crush my tent (and, uh, wife).

Oh.  It’s just a goat.  I’m still scared, actually.

We made off quickly in the morning, hoping not to disturb our host (whose name neither of us caught, but to be fair, he did talk extremely fast).  We had no idea of knowing if he was still inside the school -- indeed, if the party had even ended yet -- but we went with the age-old children’s wisdom that yes, teachers live at the school.  We left him a thank-you note and packed up our things quietly.

We took off across Oshima, pausing only for breakfast and second breakfast at the conbini just down the road.  Oshima sadly proved to be big vertically as well as by area; the entire island is split by one of several mountains, such that by the time we made it a scant six kilometers from the mysterious cram school, we were already ready for a break.  Fortunately, Mt. Karei Observatory Park was only 2.5 kilometers from the main road, and according to our map, this park had a campsite.  At last, a return to camping at campsites, we thought, setting up on a patch of dirt where we wouldn’t be afraid of offending the owner or being bothered by an axe murderer!

Why, just look at all the fun we're having!

We stocked up on provisions at a supermarket on the main road, the proprietress advising us where we could buy beer nearby, and also that camping was no fun without beer.  Truly, a land of ancient wisdom, Japan.  Ready for a couple of nights of camping, armed with beer, gyoza, and fresh pasta, we started up the road to the park.

Unfortunately, we found that 2.5 kilometers was an inaccurate gauge of the distance to the park, though perhaps it was more a vertical estimate than a horizontal one.  We quickly took to pushing, then to cursing, then to sitting.  After a time I went ahead, leaving Jenn to have a rest so I could come back for her once I’d left my bike at the top.  It didn’t take me too long to get to the park (in geological time, anyway), though it was unfortunate that all of my muscles went on strike before I could get back down to Jenn.  All said, it was a full day of pushing, perhaps 3 hours, before we got to the top.  Really, “Observatory Park” should have tipped us off.

The view was incredible, and the giant mural that played a warbly enka at random intervals fascinating.  Sakura were peppered all over the steep green slopes that look out over the nearby islands and the sweeping white bridges of the Kaido.  There were few visitors to the park that day, even though it was a Sunday, so we had the whole summit to ourselves, virtually.  Giddy with the view (and perhaps altitude sickness), we made ourselves a late lunch, then went to set up our tent on one of the narrow precipices that passed for a campground.  As there was no one manning the park office, we helped ourselves to the flattest green stairstep on the mountainside.  This is one of the greatest parts of camping in Japan: if it’s not in camping season, then the campsite is free!  Inasmuch as there is no one there to make you pay, anyway.  Typical for Japan, really; why would anyone go camping when it wasn’t the proper season for it?

While we set up, we left most of our things by a fire pit at the bottom of the stairs (I know, stairs at a campsite, why?).  By the time the tent was erected, an enormous crow had helped itself to some of our groceries.  “Hey!” I shouted, lurching down the steps, as the crow responded to my threat by doing absolutely nothing.  I got to the fire pit just in time to see the crow grab hold of a bagful of white bread and flap away, thus solving a week-old mystery and depriving us of valuable nutrients.  I couldn’t do much in retaliation but shake my fist and check the rest of our goods.

“Fuck!  That crow took our gyoza!” I shouted to Jenn.  Indeed, a package of premade dumplings the size of an abridged dictionary was utterly gone.  Strange portents, indeed.

The next day we decided to rest, and we passed our time happily on the mountaintop taking photos, writing, singing, and making elaborate meals, some of which were passed on to lower creatures with no hard feelings.  We had eaten nearly all of the groceries we brought up the mountain with us, and drank all the beer as well, but no matter, the grocery store was only an extremely short trip down the mountain, we thought as we went to sleep blissfully.

The following day we awoke to rain.  Like, rain-rain.  Some of the rainiest rain we had encountered, in fact, breaking occasionally only for fog.  We huddled in the tent for the day, trying to make our leftovers last as long as possible -- there was no way we’d be hurtling down a mountainside in this kind of weather.  We knit, tried not to think about food for the day, and played Tale of Tales’ brilliant game “The Path” on our laptop.  In retrospect, spending much of the day playing a spooky, atmospheric game about being lost in the woods wasn’t that bright of an idea whilst alone and trapped in actual spooky, atmospheric woods.  We fell asleep to troubling dreams of being stalked by wolf-sized crows and crow-sized wolves, awakening only to the PA system playing the Go To Sleep music and, much later, the Wake Up music.