The Weekend - Cooking and Fishing

Divided today's entry up into two posts because it was really too big for one.

Saturday, saw off my last CSer at 5am as she left to make her journey home to Russia.  I then went back to bed for a few more hours sleep before waking up at 9:30 so I could try to get my house clean for my cooking lesson at 11:00.

The cooking lesson has probably been my most genius idea ever (with the possible exception of ‘The Apricot Run’ game that we played while volunteering in Kefalonia – What do you do with an abundance of rotting fruit?  Pelt volunteers with them! – although they aren’t quite comparable).  Basically, I put a post on the notice board in the International Plaza in town offering my English in exchange for some other skill – dancing, martial arts, etc – and was contacted by a lady who was willing to teach me how to cook some Japanese meals.

When she called out with her friend she gave me two possible recipes to choose from: one for salmon; one for beef.  Seeing as I had a salmon fishing trip planned for the evening we went with that, so I’d know what to do with it when I got it back.  Hit the supermarket, went splits on ingredients and came back home and I observed while she and her friend got to work in my kitchen.

The recipe was ‘Chan Chan Yaki’ – more or less Grilled Salmon in Chan Chan Sauce.  So amazingly good, in fact possibly the best food I’ve had since coming to Japan.  And that’s saying a lot.

Later on I drove up to the Northern tip of the country with Norio san, who stuck by his word and brought me fishing with him.  The weather looked like it was going to be pretty miserable when we went to sleep in the car for a few hours, and it was still a bit wild when we got up at four.  We changed into waders and waterproofs (which he lent me) and waited in his friends tent for it to start getting a bit lighter out.  His friends are retired and have set up a very comfortable camp where they are staying for the two months of salmon season.

When we finally went out to catch a few fish I got to see how the operation works.  Basically, the banks on either side of the narrow river mouth were lined with about 30-40 fishermen, and salmon were getting pulled out en masse.  I managed to bag two modest specimens myself before the sun came up fully and they stopped biting (they only really bite at dusk and dawn).  Norio san had a big one right in at the shore before it broke free, and it was looking like he was going to be going home without catching any, but then he caught a nice sized female, which was a relief, because I didn’t want to show him up.

When I got home last night I hacked up both of my catches and have many of the pieces marked down as gifts as I’ll never get through them all myself.  Tried the Chan Chan Yaki that I’d been taught the day before, but I think I could have doubled the quantities of sauce as the fillet was a lot bigger than the one we’d been working with.   But it was still good.  Cooking it again for some friends tonight, so will see how it goes this time!

Think that’s about all from me,  must be off

Budgets and General Household Life

 Hmm.  Totted up my income versus expenditure yesterday and discovered I was only about 600yen (about 5.50€) short of breaking even since I moved into the apartment on the 26^th of September, and began earning.  Now, if I had had a normal working week this week, I would have been able to reclaim the outstanding yen in the week before the month was up.  However, due to an unfortunate and sinister coincidence, not one, but two public holidays imposed themselves upon me, which meant that for some reason my landlady took taken into her head to close the bar until Friday, whereas usually I’d be working a few hours most evenings during the week.  Damn ‘Respect the Elderly Day’ they won’t earn much respect from me with this sort of carry on.

I had worked out at the start of the week that if I was economic (by not spending money on luxury items such as food etc) that two days working in the Café, another two nights in the bar at the end of the week, and my one private lesson would leave me slightly better off than when I arrived.  My stocks would be sufficient to see me through, if it wasn’t for the fact that one of my CouchSurfers seemed to be on a similar budget, only he was using my food.  The others were all fine, mind, this one just seemed to lack a degree of social protocol.  I was treated out to a meal midweek by two of my surfers, but the beers afterwards (they did offer to pay for those too, but I wouldn’t let them – or at least not for all of them) pushed the target even further out of reach, despite the fact that I got a third day at the Café on Friday.

I was also supposed to work on Saturday night, but got randomly invited to go salmon fishing by a guy at the bar on Friday night, and I figured it was too good an opportunity to miss, so I took it off to drive five hours to the Northern tip of Hokkaido to the fishing ground.  More on that later.

If I’ve given the impression that I’m struggling financially, I’ve been misleading and apologise.  Granted that I’m not exactly flush at the moment, but I paid next month’s rent yesterday and have plenty left in the coffers to feed me.   I don’t get out all that much, but it’s all part of living the dream, eh?  This month will be more profitable as I have more regular hours as well as an increased wage in the Café for my second month.  I thought that my boss in the bar/landlady was going to be upping my wages as well or at least that’s the impression I got from the conversation we had the other night, but I appear to have been mistaken.  I think I’m going to demand/request better pay this week though. 

On the upside, it means I’m spending lots of time at home studying the Japanese writing system (two alphabets down, the last one is a slow process, but I’m getting there) also am trying to make it to as many of the free Japanese lessons held around the city as I can (although I’m currently averaging at one a week).

My House

My home, although a far cry from being my castle, is sufficient for me to live in to a degree of comfort.  I would say that it’s nice to have my own bed, but since I’m unable to sleep in it, or even stand near it because the dust around it results in an uncontrollable fit of sneezing, watery eyes and itchy skin, I have to make do with a futon on the floor.  I’ve tried hoovering the mattress, beating it with a stick outside (which raised a few eyebrows, whatever about clouds of dust), and clearing out the dust around the bed with a damp cloth (actually one of my surfers performed that last task as it was a bit much for me).  Still no good.  But sleeping on the floor is much more in keeping with the Japanese style anyway.

The temperature here dropped from the high 20’s to 15C almost overnight, and the house has become fairly cold.  I do have a paraffin stove that heats the place up very fast so I’m still nowhere near as badly off as I was in my apartment in Greece which had no insulation to speak of, tiled floors, high ceilings and killer black mould.  At least, not yet anyway, the mercury still has a way to drop before we hit winter temperatures.

Went on the search for a more comfortable internet location with my mobile office (basically my computer held by bungee cords on a table I rigged up over my bicycle basket) and found a new park about a block away.  What this park lacks in convenience (three minutes cycle instead of a stroll across the road) it makes up for with a better connection (a choice of two, in fact).  It may not have the personality of my local park, with attractions like the strange homeless-looking man who comes along and pats one of the trees in the morning and the irritating drunk old man who comes along and goes on and on about “America numba waan, UK numba waaaan….France no, Germany – Hitra no, Japan no, Hiroshima sad,” (America and UK number one, France is no good, Germany and Hitler are no good, Japan is no good and got taught a lesson by the States and the UK with the Hiroshima bombing – the last part is coupled by him licking his finger and dabbing tears onto his cheeks), but it does provide more or less undisturbed internet use.

My CouchSurfing hosting got off to a good start, had two guys from Poland arrive on the 2^nd of September and had people staying constantly for over three weeks after that.  My total so far is ten, and my last one left on Saturday morning.   For the most past I enjoyed their company immensely, some great stories and ideas floating around in the travelling community and I’d definitely recommend hosting if you’ve got the space/time/desire.  However that one guy from Hong Kong was very hard work, but I think I probably got him as some sort of Karma for being a git when I was in school.  I hosted him at the start of September and agreed to take him back later on in the month when he came back from WWOOfing, before I realised what I was getting myself into.  He arrived back in town on the 19^th and stayed in hotel in town that night.  However, he did call me saying that he would like to meet up for dinner.  I said that was fine, so out he comes to my place with a bag of five apples (which I appreciated as apples are a bit pricey) and then starts examining the contents of my fridge and asking if I have any pasta.  I throw something together for the two of us, he eats an apple while he’s waiting.  We ate and he hung round for a bit more, while I tried to ignore him and study some Japanese.  Eventually he left taking another apple with him for the road, and leaving the dishes for me.  What a guy.

Looks like I spoke too soon about the internet.  My new park let me down today.  Damn.  Back on the bike, standing on the side of the road.  Had one or two pics that I was going to add as well but that seems to be giving me trouble too.  Typical!

Waste Collection and Employment

A hectic few weeks have passed since my big move to Sapporo, and I haven’t really had the opportunity to keep everyone updated quite as much as I planned.  The main things that have kept me busy have been: work (kind of); becoming a CouchSurfing host; study (ish); and trying to get my head around the waste collection in Japan.

I’ll begin with the last one first, as that may take a bit of explaining to people not familiar with the “efficiency” of the separation of household rubbish.

Basically, while most of us in Europe are content to divide our rubbish up into ‘recyclable’, ‘non-recyclable’ and possibly ‘compost’ for organic waste, the Japanese go a step further.  Or, rather, several steps further, by separation waste into nine different categories.  These are: Burnable Waste; Non-Burnable Waste; Plastic Containers and Packaging; Bottles, Cans and PET Bottles; Branches Leaves, Grass and Weed Cuttings; Miscellaneous Paper; Pressurised Spray Cans and Gas Cartridges; Dry Batteries; and Bulky Refuse.

This division not only makes life awkward in terms of fitting several bins into an already limited kitchen space, but also results in a lot of time staring at an object that you are planning to discard and trying to figure out what bin it should go into.   Inevitably the trusty “Garbage and Waste Sorting Guide” needs to be consulted before making the decision, which is quite often an option that you hadn’t even considered.

An example?  Alright then, picture this - You’re writing and your biro runs out (you manage to catch it, but discover that it’s also out of ink).  You examine at the choices in front of you and reckon that it’s probably between ‘Non-Burnables’ or possibly ‘Plastic Containers and Packaging’ but probably the first one, right?  WRONG!  Ballpoint pens are, apparently, quite combustible and thus appear on the ‘burnable waste’ list, along with lunchboxes, rulers, SD memory cards, rubber and vinyl goods, clothing, blankets, leather and kitchen waste (basically compost).  Charcoal also comes under this heading, but, although I fail to see why you’d send your barbeque fuel off to an incinerator, at least that kind of makes sense.

Even when you’re fairly certain of where an item is supposed to go, it turns out to be less simple than anticipated.  A PET bottle (you’re average soft drink bottle), which appears in a category of its own, must first be de-lidded and de-labelled before being disposed of, and these are then placed in the ‘plastic containers and packaging’ bin.

Waste is collected every day of the working week, ‘Burnables’ on Monday and Thursday, ‘Plastics’ on Tuesday, ‘Bottles, etc’ on Wednesday and Friday alternates between the remaining waste types, with the exception of ‘Bulky waste’ which you have to ring a special team for and pay for disposal.

I have narrowed my bins down to three, as I had to buy them myself and I was sick of walking around loose supermarket bags of rubbish on the floor.  I chose ‘Plastics’, ‘Bottles etc’ and ‘Misc. Paper’, as these are the ones that I use most.  For my burnables, I’ve taken to keeping a small plastic bag on the sink for them, which I then dispose of in the bins at the 7/11 shop around the corner.

In other news, I’m juggling a few part time jobs at the moment.  Most frequently, I've working in my landlady’s bar - basically paid to get people to come into the place, chat with them and maybe get bought a few drinks in the process.  The wages are pretty rubbish, but I was told last night that next month they’ll be going up by a few hundred yen, which is good news, at least, if that was what she was saying to me.  Didn’t really like the work at the start, but now it’s alright, and it is a good way to pick up Japanese.  I do prefer the nights that nobody buys me any alcohol, though.  I work there most nights from nine until midnight, if it’s quiet, or later if there are a few knocking around.  I can take nights off whenever I like, they usually just ask the night before if I can work the following night.

Job number two is in a Conversation Café, where I work for three hours at a time making conversation with Japanese people who are interested in practicing their English.  The pay is alright, and the people are interesting.  It works on a rotational basis, people pay for an hour and join the table, and if they are newbies that invariably leads to introductions, which we’ve quite possibly covered already, which is a rut that I feel that I have to figure a way out of, so that we aren’t just repeating ourselves, which isn’t too stimulating for the rest of the group.  There are notebooks that we can jot things like vocab down in, or draw pictures to help customers understand if there’s a breakdown in communication.  I have come across some pretty complicated words in there from past conversations, which have made me feel like I’m not really covering the same ground as the other ‘conversationists’ for want of a better title.  But I enjoy the work, and have now been given an extra day per week (making it two days), which is good.  My wages will increase there in month two as well.

Finally I have also taken on a private language lesson which I have once a week for one hour.  It’s just a conversation lesson, although now she wants to go over some grammar points as well, so that’s going to be fun.  The pay could be better, especially as I meet her in a café and so have to shell out for my own coffee (or orange juice), but it’s good experience, and she seemed happy enough with the first lesson, so we’ll try to keep that going.

My free internet in the park seems to have vanished, I think they got wise to my antics (me and three of my CouchSurfers lined up on benches and foldy chairs probably hastened the outcome, but it was good while it lasted).  I’m hoping that it’s just a temporary lapse though.  It means that I have to wander further down the road to the traffic lights, and use the internet from some company or other.  I think I can only do it outside of working hours, though, as one of the guys got chased away from there the other day.

I think that’s probably enough talk for now.   More to come.

Rice Farming - as promised

Right, once again nearly a month has passed since my last post, but I’ve moved into an apartment now and so hopefully there’ll be a lot more time to type up something quickly.

Of course I don’t have the internet I was promised when I moved in, so I’ll have to type everything at home and then stroll out to park across the road to scab off a neighbour’s unsecured wireless connection.

So before I tell you about what’s happening now, I should probably let you catch up on a few things, starting with the promised depiction of the work on the rice fields.

Rice fields

 Job one – Grass and Weed trimming

The first thing that needed to be done in the rice field was to trim the banks around the edges of the field (my host, a smiley man named Yuhei, did this with a strimmers with a big metal blade that had no guard around it, so I was a bit nervous if he was attacking the grass nearby).  I followed with a rake and flung the cuttings around the field, trying to spread them out as much as possible.  On one of my first days I raked up a snake, who wasn’t best pleased, but Yuhei deftly flicked him into the field with his rake.  He then told me that some of the snakes bite.  I don’t think they were supposed to poisonous though, but I was always wary of them after that, although I didn’t see many after that. 

Once the grass had been cut and distributed around the paddy, Yuhei opened the irrigation channel to the field, redirecting the flow of water and it would start to fill up.

Job two - Cultivating

After the cutting, spreading and flooding of the field Yuhei would go out and cultivate it.  This involved heading down with his tractor to drag a machine with big spinning blades around the paddy, breaking down the grass and weeds and sticking them in the mud under the water.  This was usually done a few days later after the first task, although I’m not sure if this was because of time management or because the weeds needed time to break down.

I never got to drive the tractor.

Job three - Planting

The next mission was to plant the rice.  This could be done with any number of machines, each farmer I saw planting seemed to have their own mad looking contraption, from big beasts of things that could plant twelve or more rows at a time, to more modest ‘drag-along-behind-the-tractor’ affairs which could plant six rows or so.  In our case we had a little push-along yoke that looked like someone had taken the handlebars of a scooter and an outboard motor and stuck them at either end of a device that looked like an instrument of torture, which allowed us to plant four rows at a time.

The procedure for rice planting is as follows:

·   - Load up the planting machine with trays of rice seedlings (perhaps 500 or so seedlings per tray).   One tray is fed into each of the four planting mechanisms at the back of the machine, while others are placed on shelves on the top, as replacements.

·      -   Find a stupid foreigner and give him a fistful of loose seedlings and tell him to follow after you as you push your planter along, sticking the seedlings in the ground wherever the machine has missed.

·      -    Make sure that the machine misses as many places as possible to keep your help bent double for hours, wading through the muck and trying to place the seedlings in line with the machine’s rows.

·       -   When you’re finished planting by machine, grab a tray of seedlings yourself and start filling in the gaps left by the machine as well.  It’s very important that you go two to three times faster than your stupid foreigner, while at the same time seeming to move more slowly.  They'll really feel stupid then.

We also planted rows of seedlings the traditional way (no machines) on two occasions - once to show a group of school kids how it was done and a second time as a day out for families from the city.  This requires several people, each brandishing bunches of seedlings, standing along a length of rope which is pulled taut across the width of the paddy.  This line is has markers (in this case red tape) evenly spaced along it, at about 30cm apart, the idea being that each person takes their seedlings and places one at the points indicated by the marks, thus ensuring that the rice plants are evenly spaced.   Each person might be planting anything between four to six rows or more, depending on how many people you have and the size of the field, etc.  When one row is completed the people on each end of the rope move it forwards (or backwards, it depends which way you are working, as we went forwards the first day and backwards the second day.  I preferred backwards for some reason) 30cm, again to space the seedlings evenly.  It’s quite a simple concept (although I’m not sure how well I’ve explained it), and it doesn’t really take a master mind to catch on – thankfully. 

 BUT...

Both times that I was working in the fields in this way the woman on my left (I don’t know if it was the same woman as they tend to wear big straw hats, sunglasses and towels or handkerchiefs or whatever over the lower part of their face, I think to avoid the heat of the sun or to avoid getting a tan) started planting between the bloody markers.  Now whatever about the lady who did it on the second day (who may or may not have been the same person or otherwise a townie) the woman on the first day was the paddy owner’s wife (not my host, different farmers).  Although the first day annoyed me a bit as it looked like I had made a bit of a mess of my work as well, it wasn’t so bad.

HOWEVER...

On the second day we did it, not only did the spa on my left start planting between the lines, but the guy on my right, who was planting on the marks started planting in my rows, which meant that I started edging towards the left.  Perhaps half way through the work I looked along the field and realised that gradually I’d been landed right in front of the dipshit’s work.  It was SO annoying, honestly I felt like hitting the guy beside me and pushing the stupid woman into the ground at one of the red markers so that she might see how to do it right.  But you can’t really do that kind of thing here.  Well, I suppose you wouldn’t really get away with it at home either.

Anyway, by the time we had reached the end of the field Yuhei had come along and stood between me and the offender on my left, although I’m not sure if it was to correct me in my work, or because he saw that she was in danger of being strangled.  In any case, I felt happier knowing that he could see I wasn’t the one making an absolute hames of the thing, because I was sure he’d thought it was me the last time.  The place was a mess though.  Now I know why traditionally women stayed home and cooked the dinner...

Job Four – Release the Ducks!

Yup, that’s right, ducks.  Not all farms are into this, but, being an organic farmer Yuhei subscribed the ‘Aigamo Method’ of rice farming.   This involves breeding Aigamo ducklings, which you release into the paddy after you have planted it and fenced it off (with nets repaired for hours on end by none other than my good self - a 50m roll of netting takes about three hours to stitch back together, on average and I reckon I did about five or six rolls or so).   The ducks then swim along contently between the plants all day eating all the nasty weeds and insects and fertilising the field a bit at the same time.

For more see http://web-japan.org/trends01/article/021022sci_r.html

And that’s about all I got to do in the world of rice farming, harvesting will take place at the end of the month but I won’t be at that at all.  Shame.

Coming soon...

Hiking in Diasetsuzan

Back to the Real World – Apartment-Hunting, Study and Work in the Sapporo