[This entry is a little back dated, I’ve been kinda slow at posting but want things to stay in order]

The theme for May seems rice fields, I’ve now spent two days standing in them. Geraldine, the JET in the neighboring town of Midori, invited me and a bunch of other JETs to come to her town’s rice planting festival. This is the kind of thing I’ve been wanting to do for awhile, so I was really glad to go. It was a lot of fun too, the towns people were really friendly and about a dozen of us showed up to take part. This was a really good opportunity for some of the city JETs to experience country life (and to see we aren’t lying when we tell them how long it takes to get into the city).

When we got there, they loaned us costumes to wear. Fortunately us guys were only going to play drums, because the legs of mine we a bit tight around the calfs — embarrassment would have resulted from me doing much bending. Anyways, everyone (especially the ladies ) looked really cute in their costumes. That’s me above, in case you couldn’t tell.

So the division of labor was rather traditional, guys playing drums while the gals planted rice and sang. The drumming was pretty elaborate and I hadn’t had a chance to practice, so I was a complete mess at it. I think the planting was proabaly easier in some ways, not that I was complaining…

Midway thru, there was a ceremony thanking everyone for coming. A person from a UN office in Hiroshima had come out, which was really cool. Brad (who’s a CIR) got roped into doing his first translation gig by Geraldine as a result. Then back to the rice planting. In all, probably took a couple hours to do the field. Went surprisingly fast actually.

Afterwards we had a big party with the townsfolk with food, beer and sake. There was also karaoke, with us JETs trying to do YMCA (none of us could remember the words and the lyrics on the screen were Japanese). Finally people started heading home by various routes. Geraldine dropped me and Jen at our bus stops on opposite sides of the highway. We had a conversation of sorts yelling across the road between cars. OK, I was a bit drunk at the time.

Ironicly, even though Midori is one of the other towns in my city, the easiest way to getting home was to take a highway bus to the neighboring city of Miyoshi, then the train back to Mukaihara…

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