Picking, pizza, painting
My favorite day of Okayama prefecture sightseeing so far (well, except for the days that involved cats, but of course nothing can compete with those) came as a surprise. It was listed on my schedule as “agriculture day,” an ominously vague term that conjured up visions of toiling in fields and milking cows.
Part of which turned out to be true, actually. The first stop on my itinerary was a rice field. A tough-looking Japanese man handed me a scythe and demonstrated the proper technique for harvesting rice and tying the bundles. Though it took several tries for me to catch on, soon I was chopping away happily. But even at expert speed (not my speed, to be clear — the farmer’s speed), clearing the field would have taken a while.
Fortunately, modern technology has solved that problem. After we wasted a little time puttering about the field with our scythes, the farmer jumped on his tractor and demonstrated its features. It was a pretty simple machine: one joystick for the shovelly bit up front the cuts the rice plants, one lever for driving speed, and a few buttons for operations related to emptying the tank of collected rice. Cool, I thought, we’ll watch him harvest a bit of rice now. Instead, he got off the tractor seat and gestured for me to board. I sat down and took the controls in hand. Hanging off the side of the tractor, he told me, go! So I did. After a row, he jumped off and only offered corrections by waving at me from the ground; after another row, he ignored me entirely and took to chatting with my guides. Each time I finished a row, I expected to get off the tractor, but he just pointed to the next. About halfway through the field, he finally tired of my cautious pace and took my place to finish the job.
Up the hill in a small, concrete-floored warehouse, he showed us what happens to the rice after it’s harvested. We watched rice that had finished its time in the dryer speed through shelling and sorting machines and pour into 600-kilogram sacks, ready to be transported for packaging and sale.
Fortunately, the rice harvesting was my only hard work for the day. At our next stop, we sauntered into a large garden to pick eggplant and basil, and then used our pickings to top delicious pizzas, cooked in a real pizza oven. (Is this a culinary experience I was expected in Japan? No. But I’m not complaining.) As though a pizza each were not enough food, our lunch also included a crispy salad, a cold pumpkin soup, and rice topped with miso-marinated peppers — all made from the garden’s produce.
What followed was an introduction to the odd Japanese art of “etegami” (literally, picture letters). Essentially, it’s a tradition of doing ink and watercolor still life paintings (usually of produce), accompanied by a brief message and sent to friends and family. Each painting starts with an ink outline, for which the brush is held at the very end of the handle and kept perfectly vertical, the tip just barely touching the paper. This results in thin, shaky lines, which are characteristic of the genre.
I left Kibichuo (the town where all these wonderful activities took place) very pleased with my day of learning, art, and good food.
If you’re even more agriculturally inclined than I am, you can actually spend up to two weeks staying at farms in Kibichuo. Each farm house has its own set of activities, most of which revolve around food, and information is available in English: http://kibichu.net/e/index.html.
