ZASO.

it's the middle of a humid july in the outskirts of kyoto and i'm knee deep in mud. i'm wrentching foot long weeds out of the ground, between rows of long green rice stalks. every time i make another step, my foot comes down in a slow squish and water dancing spiders skake away frantically, and reddish brown salamanders squirm out of view. i'm head to toe covered, long sleeved working shirt and pants, boots to my knees, gloves, sleeve protectors... so sweat is dripping down my face.

and every time i pull a weed, the roots make a satisfying sound as they get sucked out of the mud.

so, this is wwoof. hard work? beautiful scenery? incredible organic food? an amazing cultural experience? something like indentured servitude? well, yes, possibly all of the above.

so there aren't leeches, as i had worried about, but what i didn't think about were the SPIDERS. and there are hella spiders. but strangely, with the uh, higher mission of weed pulling somehow they're not even bothering me. and the other day when i say a long snake slither out of the ride paddy into the the grass, i just laughed.

anyway, all i have to say is daaang, people in the countryside work hard!

and the people who are working the hardest-- my hosts, kei-san and setsu-san. kei-san is a loud and friendly guy in his sixties who twenty years ago left his job as a salaryman to pursue this dream of having his own country farm. now he has 4 tamboo (rice paddies), and in addition to receiving woof-ers they also take in those looking for a getaway from city life to spent a night or two for what they call an inaka taiken ("country-life experience").

setsu-san saw her son swinging from a vine under a massive tree and was inspired to start making baskets. the first basket was completely round, and then as the craft evolved, her baskets got funkier and more creative. now their living room is filled with vine crafts of different kinds and sizes-- baskets, vases, necklace pendants and "shadow lamps" that cast incredible dark shapes on the walls.

kei-san's english is kind of like a better version of my nihongo-- several key words and verbs strung together without any attention to grammar. so basically we talk in tarzan speak to each other. my first day on the rice paddy:

kei-san: kore wa RICE (pointing at the rice stalks). kore wa zaso desu (pointing at basically identical looking plant). english, WEED. japanese, ZASO. very same, ne? look--rice ga HAIR aru. zaso ga NO HAIR. you see? no hair, ne?

me (the whole time nodding): ah, hai, hai, yeah i see. wakarimashita.

and somehow we get by.

after working an hour and a half, kei-san will call out, "stefanie-san! breaktime!" and i trudge over across the bank now filled with fresh muddy weeds up to the top of the incline. we sit on two overturned milk crates there with a couple of bottles of water, munch on some sembe (rice crackers), and chat. the view is a tall narrow valley, with two sleep mountains on each side, covered in perfectly aligned, tall skinny trees. the tamboo (rice fields) glow an irridescent green, wind blowing slow waves through the fields, and nestled deep in the valley are a handful of old traditional style japanese houses, whose bright tile rooves glisten like the backs of fish in the sun.

check out more of my photos on flickr.