Globetrotting

In total the Himorogian consist of the clinic in Tokyo, the home in Ohara, the wwoofer house, and three fields. The house is in a small grouping of homes alongside dense forest, just off the main roads of the town. It is an average sized house, considered a two bedroom, with an office, a study, a small kitchen, two toilets, and a bathing room. It sounds big, yet it is designed vertically and very efficiently. The house is also full. I mean completely full. There is something everywhere something could be. There lives Kastura Shimoyamada, and her two children, Haru, who just turned 7, and Aki, who is 5 months. Yoshinari, the husband only comes home on Mondays, otherwise he stays in Tokyo to run their clinic. At the clinic he consults and treats clients, hosts seminars weekly, and continues his ongoing studies. At the home there is room, and a need, for up to five wwoofers at a time. As wwoofers Melissa and I are a big part of making the Himorogian function, and are treated as part of the family. Our primary focus is tending to the fields, but our task our varied. We cook, clean, entertain the children, and occasionally help out with clinic work.

The Shimoyamadas rent the three different fields, about 2,600m2 each, in the small town of Ohara. The fields will produce food for the family and wwoofers throughout the season, and grow a wide variety of beans, vegetables, and even some wild weeds that make it to the diner table.
Our days can be very different but typically follow a similar format. We wake up every morning at our wwoofer house, and enjoy breakfast and tea or coffee. We usually have whatever was left over from last night’s supper, mixed with our grocery store purchases. We have come to love rice for breakfast. Cold rice with fruit and soymilk is our favorite. After breakfast we fold up our bedding. We sleep on a thick futon mattress. Not like what Americans call a futon, it’s a bit thinner and not as wide. We all sleep around a kotatsu, which is a coffee table that has a heater inside and a blanket that comes over all sides to trap heat. With you feet under the kotatsu it is like being right next to a campfire, with out the smoke! The wwoofer house is an, almost, fully functional freestanding house. We have neighbors on either side and overlook large rice fields. Again there is a dense native forest behind us with bamboo, and kinkon (kumquat) trees. From the outside the house looks pretty dumpy, but inside it is very cozy. The entry way takes you into the main room, about 15’ by 20’, centered around the kotatsu. The ceiling pyramids up with wonderful cabin style woodwork. Our kitchen/dining room is a step up onto a barely stable linoleum floor with a pattern that makes me think of the sixties. We have a tub and washing machine that don’t function, and our toilet is sort of outhouse style, no plumbing! It might not sound like much but it’s our little paradise.
When the town chimes ring at seven we usually begin hot water for the tea. After breakfast we spend a little time stretching, reading, writing, or just being lazy. We gather our effects for the day and head to the Himorogian. It is about a 15-minute drive. Yachiyo, a Japanese intern, dives Melissa, Kaki, a Taiwanese wwoofer, and myself through Ohara to the home. It is a nice drive with lots of shops and stores along the way. The town is rural, but it s is allot like small town Nebraska in many ways. It has its McDonalds, and a lot of 7-11’s.
Once we arrive at the Himorogian, we do a brief clean up, sweep the floor, and put away the dishes. We all sit down for a morning meeting to discuss what will happen during the day, and what our goals should be. The work is very nice, and there is not allot of pressure to perform quickly, but yet we work diligently. It is wonderful to see our accomplishments in the fields, after all why we are here they are our fields too. The wheat and rice is a great couple. The wheat is 15cm high or so now, so it is easy for us to get in between and sow the rice seeds. When the wheat is ready to harvest the rice will begin to come up. Together they complete the cycle of the field.
One key element of life there is that everything is done completely natural. No soap on the dishes just hot water. We wash our clothes in a small energy efficient washer with natural soap, and hang them to dry. Almost every dish of every meal that comes out of the kitchen is vegan, made from scratch, and absolutely delicious.

Not one single grain of rice goes to waste. What we don’t eat for lunch gets cooked into diner. What we don’t eat for dinner becomes breakfast. There is a very small refrigerator in the home, however all food gets left out, veggies, leftovers and all. After the morning meeting we usually head to the field to plant rice. We work until lunch, which is sounded by a bell that sounds like a cheesy cell phone ring. After lunch we clean up and relax for a while, and maybe do some more work until we come back to the house to bath and get ready for dinner. We bath in the traditional Japanese style. You wash yourself in a shower sort of, and then you get into the big tub to soak. We all share the same bath water, and the insulated cover and heated tub keeps it warm for all. After a long day we are happy to get back to the wwoofer house and relax until we fall asleep.
Our host family is very nice, and very intelligent people. Yoshinari has studied a wide variety of natural healing, from acupuncture and flower essence, to music therapy and clay healing. When we first came into the living room of the home and I saw A Nirvana Nevermind poster next to a poster of Einstein, in between hundreds and hundreds of books, I knew we had found a special place.
To be continued…

Tags: himorogian, Japan, kotatsu, Ohara, Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 3:36 am and is filed under Japan, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.