A Monday

Last night I went to a small "business" party type of thing at the house next door with Muto-san. There were people from Nagoya who are part of a new wave of organic and small farm supporters trying to get that produce into the city...or something like that. This group was called "The Ninjin Club" which means the "carrot club". There were eight of us all together and we enjoyed a meal of grilled pork, beef, cabbage, onions and shiitake mushrooms. The beef was Dai-san's beef and the pork Muto-san's. Everyone chatted and drank. There was a girl who is 23, she was really nice and when they came to sleep at the guest house, she had the top bunk in my room. We chatted some and she invited me to come by Nagoya before I go home. She has a little daughter that I think would be a delight to meet...so I think I might stop there in May. They were all very nice. They left at 6 in the morning to go to the onsen nearby before heading to Fukuoka for more touring of Kyushu. 

Yesterday was Sunday and technically my day off. I skyped Dad in the morning and was pretty happy about joining the little birthday get together that Elijah, Qun and Uncle Bill had for Dad. They showed me the cake that Elijah had made for him - what? I beautiful chocolate bunk cake with powdered sugar dusted on top. It looked really yummy:) I also got to see the front page of the Oberlin News Tribune where Elijah's smiling face was. Proud sis.  However, my little moment in Oberlin ended when I went to wash the eggs I collected that morning. It's always good to see people back home...if it weren't for Skype I probably wouldn't have lasted this long. 

It's been terribly cold. In the mid twenties, Fahrenheit. The water system in many places was frozen. Only one sink worked in the storage house where I wash the eggs and I still had to carry a bucket of water along with the feed to the coops. It's kind of a work out...hopefully by April it will feel like nothing. 

After that I worked on braiding some bracelets out of some string I had and studied two chapters of kanji for a couple hours...I felt really good about that. Before I knew it was chicken time #2 and I went off and did that. Everyday now we get a little over 100 eggs. 

Today in the morning I did some busy work...slicing stickers for rice bags to sell, filling rice bags, laundry...that kind of thing. I found a map the other day with the beginnings of what seemed to me as the coloring in of countries that WWOOFers had come from. I decided I was going to carry that out on a small map, because the other is apparently too large. I looked through the log book and also asked Muto-san and there are 23 countries. That's pretty cool...I must say. I'm the first from Ohio in the US. People came from New York, California and Washington before. 

In the afternoon I went with Hitomi-san and Muto-san back to the shiitake work in the mountains. I tried not to think about feet and chainsaws. That was pretty tough...I'm just too weak right now. Soon I'll get stronger!

For now I need to sleep and heal up for something (hopefully) to do tomorrow. 

Today was sunny and beautiful but the next scheduled nice day is next Sunday...I'm not very happy about that.