I asked for the day off today, to give myself some time to catch up on things I wanted to do, including this.

I've been at Muchachaen for about two weeks now, and honestly I'm still not completely sure what this place is, exactly. I know Muchachaen is a company, a collective of farmers who sell their organic produce and fruits under one name. Perhaps they join because they can get a higher price for their produce -- Muchachaen has been established in Japan for thirty years. I'm staying at a place called "ken-shu center," which seems to be a training center for people who want to learn about organic farming. There are maybe two dozen people here -- some of them paid staff, some of them minimally-paid trainees (people who signed up for a one-year program.) And some of them, like me, seem to be here more tentatively, and seem to be welcome as long as we're willing to partake of the work. The only income we receive is ample food and shelter, and we get to be here, for whatever reason we wanted to be here. In some ways it could be like a hippy-commune, except nobody smokes pot, or listens to the Grateful Dead. Also people work very very hard, and seem to maintain a spirit of happiness while doing it.

On the average day here I get up somewhere between 5 or 6am, get dressed, and have a quick breakfast. Usually rice and bread, and whatever else I can find. Then I go with a group of people towards some task in a nearby farm -- it could be pulling weeds between rows of vegetables, or spreading fertilizer around a grove of citrus trees up in the mountains. One interesting job was clearing brush around some small, young lemon trees. Because nature here on Shikoku is so intense, the difficulty was often trying to find the trees among all the brush that had grown up and over them. A few times I went with three other people to spend the day making 800 to 1000 bags of pig manure at a pig farm. I guess manure is like any other product of a farm -- if you have it, sell it.

Usually we work for about three or four hours in the morning, with a break in there somewhere, then have a two-hour lunch, including a nap for half an hour to an hour. In the afternoon, we work for another three or so hours before getting ready to return. Sometimes the days are much shorter, with side-trips to a local hot-springs. Usually we return to the center between 7 and 8pm, to get ready for the next day.

Another way that the work is difficult, is I have very little time to myself. Even on a day of five or so hours of work, there's an additional one or two hours in a car going towards work, the two-hour lunch, and the one or two-hours on the way back. And then there's preparation for work the following day, which usually means laundry. And days off are infrequent maybe not even one per week. Even after four straight days of demanding work (two days in the pig farm, two days spreading fertilizer) I have today off because I asked for it (and not very graciously either, but I'll get back to that.)

So anyway, yesterday, after three days of very hard work with insufficient sleep, I rather ingraciously demanded a day off, when a simple request would have sufficed. And I did it in front of the whole crew, when maybe a private discussion would have been better. The interesting thing is, no one else complained, or at least not where other people could hear. Everyone else worked today.

So anyway, the work is difficult. But I do keep myself amused by telling myself "Well, you SAID you wanted a difficult vacation!" And honestly, I still do. I knew it would be a struggle, so I'm still ok. A couple of times I've considered leaving, but I feel like I'm done with wandering around as I did on my bicycle during June, and I don't think I'd enjoy going back to it. Also, there times when I've felt the genuine warm glow of happiness here -- maybe after a good conversation in Japanese, or trying different kinds of citrus fruits which I'd never heard of before, or a genuine sense of commeraderie with the other people here. Despite cultural and linguestic barriers, I feel basically accepted and liked here.

I'm really enjoying learning about the people here -- mostly Japanese (Xavier, the young french guy, is the only other non-Japanese person.) Most of them have given up some kind of life or job, and are exploring something completely different. For three days I stayed at a farm which was managed by a guy about my age. He studied psychology in college, trained and worked as an architect after he graduated, and then decided he wanted to try farming.

There is a guy here, named Masaya, who seems like he could be straight from a novel -- he works like a maniac, drinks like a maniac, always seems to have high spirits, and seems to be really aware of nature. The first day I worked here, he found a salamander while weeding around some sato-imo plants (sato-imo is grown for the root -- I've never tried it, but the leaves are large and broad.) The other day he found a bird's nest while carving a path through thick brush, trying to find lemon-trees which were planted the year before. The nest had two bean-sized brown eggs in it, so he left that patch alone. Yesterday after work, in the common room of the dorm, I was watching ants. They were carrying away a newly dead spider. I showed this to Masaya, and his question was "who killed the spider?" He's not a paid staff member or paid trainee, but he always takes a huge share of work and responsibility without complaint. Even though he's been here only two months, he seems to have taken some role in leading and planning the different jobs here. The funny thing is, the life he gave up to come here, was as a farmer! He rented land in Kyushu to grow vegetables, but left it to come here.

Another reason I want to stay, is I can't honestly think of a better way to learn Japanese than to hear it and speak it every day. I think this environment, farm work, is maybe even better than a language school or something similar, because I hear a variety of dialects, and the subjects of discussion can range from the vulgar to the sublime. And I'm using it in a much deeper way than I was as a traveller. I'm not just asking someone at the train station when the next train leaves; I have to somewhat follow conversations, understand instructions, and ask questions. So far the people here have been willing to drop down to my level of Japanese ability when I ask them to, or to answer my questions, so it seems like a good environment.

I also feel like I'm learning a fair amount about how Japanese people work with each other -- work is done with a communal spirit, and at all costs a certain atmosphere of respect is maintained. I think a big part of Japanese politeness is a mechanism to allow people to work together, with a minimum of friction. So it's not just niceness, it's necessary in order to work together, which in turn is necessary in order to keep food on the table and stay alive. From my work with EDA I've visited companies where this was not the case -- the work environment seemed to be a place of individual competition and tension. At worst, even an arena where each person is continuously on the defense from verbal barbs from other people, or looking for a way to send a verbal jab to someone else.

Another thing I've noticed is how much Japanese people laugh. It seems to be one response to adversity, maybe more healthy than getting angry. Several times I've been the target of laughter, from my Japanese, or from my behaviour, but so far I've been able to say to myself, "Eh, let them be amused." In fact, it's interesting to explore the niche of clown a bit. Also, I've found that I can occasionally make successful jokes in Japanese, which gives me a bit of satisfaction.

If I didn't know any Japanese I think I could feel quite isolated and alone here. Sometimes when I'm especially tired, I feel this way -- my Japanese level is not at the level where I can really participate in the flow of daily conversation -- sometimes I can understand parts of it, or the general topic of discussion, but often it just flows over and around me without me understanding any of it. But realistically, it's unfair to expect the people around me to translate everything into English (which they probably couldn't do anyway) or to limit themselves to the low-first-gear of my Japanese ability. So in situations I just listen, and try to fish meaning out of the stream of conversation. Also, I often do have conversations in Japanese -- several people seem interested in helping me with the language, and if we converse, they're willing to take the time to speak at my level. Xavier has had a harder time with this -- he speaks no Japanese at all, so he often feels isolated. Whenever I'm around we talk, since his English is quite good.

So anyway, I have about ten more days here, if I don't drop dead from exhaustion among orange trees atop a mountain. It's difficult, but there are elements here that I simply couldn't have experienced without embracing the work too -- plucking citrus fruits from the trees as I pass by in a moving truck, the amazing variety of insects, the views of the landscape from a hilltop, singing Karaoke.

Well, it's 7:30pm, and people are back. Maybe someone else will want to use this computer, so I'd better wrap this up.

I've considered postponing my return to the US by another few weeks -- I'll never be able to learn Japanese like I can while I'm here. But I do miss my grammar books -- grammar is a lot harder to pick up on the fly, than vocabulary. And right now grammar is what I most feel I'm lacking. I also think maybe it'd be good to wrap things up and leave as planned. After ten days here, I'll probably spend another ten days visiting people in Japan (I'd like to visit Nakamura's farm again, very briefly, Masami and Shoko, and I've been invited to visit Masami's family in Shizuoka.) The stay here at Muchachaen is fascinating, but it's basically tentative -- I'm not training to be a farmer in Japan, so maybe my reasons for being here aren't strong enough for an extended stay. Also, I have a little nest of problems to solve in the US, when I return. I'm a little like the other people here, in that I've left a life to come here, but basically I have to come back to my old life, and I have a bunch of problems to figure out when I return.