Rice Harvest

Last week was rice harvest time in Isahaya. There are many, many tiny family run rice fields around town -some are elevated, cut into hill sides, some are flat and run along the main roads. The entire extended family shows up for the harvest, otherwise, I usually just see the grandparents working in the fields. The rice is grown in flooded paddies, which are drained before the cutting starts. Most of the fields are cut with a small machine the farmer can push, but some fields (at least this year) needed to be cut by hand because the typhoons blew down the rice stalks. Once cut, the stalks are tied into a shock, which are then hung upside down on racks to dry for a week or so.

Another small machine is used to feed the dried stalks into, so it can take off the seed tops (rice) and spit out the stalks. The rice is fed into big sacks and the stalks are stacked and burned. These fires are smoky and smelly... they just don't seem to have the space to compost or figure out how to get rid of the stuff they don't want. The farmers are always burning something.

Dave came across a roadside kiosk that farmers bring their rice to for hulling. Now that we know what they are, we've been noticing the kiosks more frequently. Apparently, you pay about a $1, dump in your rice (seems to handle about 20 lbs at a time) and nicely hulled and polished rice shoots out.

For us non-farmers, we can buy our rice at the supermarket or a rice vending machine. The vending machine sells 5Kg & 10Kg of 8 different varieties of rice. The price of rice at the vending machine works out to about $1.25/lb. Very protected market here; absolutely no rice imports from overseas. At customs, in the airport, there's a sign which lists banned import goods: drugs, pornography, guns, swords, and rice! Photos of the rice harvest are at http://photos.yahoo.com/~iverlink

Musings

Westerners
There are not many Westerners in Isahaya. We can cause a stir when we're out and about, with children pointing and staring. Most people are very nice and polite to us, and old men, for some reason, are the talkers. A guy approached me in the supermarket the other day and asked if I was American. He asked me a bunch of questions that culminated in “how long are you here?”. I'm pleased because I think I know how to say eight months since I know “8” and “month” in Japanese, so I say “hachi gatsu”. He looks, and blinks a couple of times,and then bursts out laughing and says “but it’s September now, August was last month.” Too late I remember that August translates as ‘8th month’. Ah well, I still don’t know how to say 8 months.

We've met one other Western family since we've been here, the Bartletts, and they said that we and the Farlands (an IBM family here for the summer) were the only Westerners they've met in the three years they've lived in Isahaya. Prior to that they were in Tokyo for several years. They've been very good friends to us and our kids have gotten along great with their 12-year old son, Stuart. They've helped us out a great deal!


Plant Life
The flowers come in waves - we're seeing cosmos everywhere. I've heard that the cherry blossoms in the spring, then the azaleas are incredible. Recently, I noticed flowers called Higanbana blooming. Long stalks without many leaves, but a very pretty spidery, bright red flower. Apparantly, they are associated with the world after death, so they are also known as ghost flower or funeral flower. I read that children would be scolded if they brought them home. They are all over the place though because the bulbs are poisonous so they're planted near rice fields to keep out rats and moles. The funny thing is I notice cut Higanbana being sold in the grocery store. I didn't buy any.


Hair Cut
Dave comes home raving about his hair cut. They really know how to do it, he says - hot towels, head and shoulder massages, a shave with a blade, a skillful, thorough cut -- they wash your hair afterwards, which makes total sense because it gets rid of all the loose hair. I took Eric yesterday. He got the full treatment, minus the shave. So I thought - I gotta get in on this - so the barber sent me next door to his wife's hair salon. I settled in the chair waiting for the hot towel and massage and all I got was cold water squirted at my head with tuts over my knots and gray hair. On to a really awful cut and she didn't even wash my hair! I lost something in the translation. Dave says my humidity-induced frizzy curls frightened her.


How illiterates function
I’ve always wondered how illiterates can function in society. Now I know how they do it. My Japanese is limited to niceties and numbers, so when it comes to making purchases, I completely rely on pictures and what I know of products. So I buy the dish detergent that shows sparkly dishes. I buy the meal kit that shows a tea kettle pouring water, along with the envelope of stuff, into the meat. I tried to look for bleach based on the American looking bleach bottle, but here it’s a mint green bottle with a pink cap.

Isahaya Living

Isahaya city
Isahaya is spread out in a funny way and there are several different downtown-type areas. The rolling hills create these downtown clusters in the valleys, leaving the shoreline to be really built up. The train station area consists of a big department store (with a great supermarket and fancy food court at the basement level), a bunch of small shops and a bus terminal across the street. In another downtown area there is a covered pedestrian street mall with a series of nice shops and a department store. In yet another pocket, there is a department store and a beautiful park with hiking trails, a sports stadium, athletic fields and a series of interesting swimming pools.

These downtown areas of Isahaya have that nice city feel, otherwise Isahaya is a crossroads town. People drive through it on their way somewhere else... which is actually convenient for us because we can easily head in different directions. Our apartment building lies on the outskirts of the city and the nearby roadways are a series of strip malls and loud billboards. Industrial-type buildings are plopped right in front of really nice residential housing. The zoning regulations must be interesting.

There are no subways (Nagasaki uses trams) and I'm still working to figure out the buses. I watched the local buses one day and carefully wrote the kanji for what I thought was the bus number and the translation turned out to be "exit".


Isahaya Neighborhood
Our apartment building is brand new and we're on the 6th flour out of 10. It’s nice because everything is, well, new, but it’s missing that Japanese flavor. We do have a tatami room and three of the rooms have balconies and we get a nice view from two of them and view of the school from the other.

The front of the building faces a busy 4-lane highway. Behind us is a neighborhood with a variety of homes built into a hillside. The homes are all different shapes and sizes, set in lots of all crazy shapes and sizes. No lawns, some nice gardens incorporating rocks and carefully pruned trees. Some people have vegetable gardens which they are constantly digging up and burning the brush. Again, no regs that I can see - air quality really is not that good.

Nestled in the neighborhood is the kid's school - Matsuyama Elementary, a K-6 school. Three stories tall. It's a closer than walking to our mailbox in Vermont. What a nice commute. I'll write more about school later.

On the other side of the highway, set behind fields of rice and lotus, we can see the bay, a few industrial buildings, a ball field and soccer field, a fishing boat marina. They’ve done nothing with the bay or other waterfronts for folks to enjoy or use for walks. We have to follow a funny, dusty road past the industrial buildings to get to the wharf bay area. The wharf is very new looking. Poured concrete and brightly painted. A bunch of fishing boats moored there. It’s pretty in its own way, but not what I pictured. I’m surprised that there is no sea salt smell of the ocean. Across the bay is a neighborhood of very sweet little houses.


Random thoughts
The Japanese don’t seem to have the income disparity that we have in the U.S. They are very community-minded and it shows in the investment they make in their infrastructure. Parks always have public buildings. You can find a clean bathroom wherever you are.

Many restaurants have a sink in the front of the store, so you can wash your hands before eating. If they don’t have that, they’ll give you hot hand towels or packaged hand wipes. Dave said the Sony cafeteria has a whole row of sinks for hand washing. The kids also have a row of sinks outside the classrooms.

A lot of the population smokes cigarettes, which doesn't reconcile with the long life expectancy numbers. Apparently, miso soup is the magic elixir.

Vending machines are ubiquitous. You’ll be on a small back road and in the middle of nowhere, there will be a vending machine. The machines sell all kinds of stuff, but mostly drinks (cold in the summer, hot in the winter). Dave found a rice vending machine. I guess it would be good to drive right up to the machine to load up a big bag of rice instead of lugging a same size bag out of the supermarket.

Media
The broadcast television stations have a smattering of English language programs at random times. I've come across a two-year old ER episode the other night. There is an international news slot in the morning where they rotate 15-minutes of news in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Chinese. So many ways to improve my language skills. CNN and the BBC represent the English 15-minutes. We do get a funny interpretation of the Japanese news every evening. The news anchors are jabbering away in Japanese while a stilted English voice-over is supplied. It’s good to know what’s going on in this country especially with the typhoons and earthquakes, so we appreciate it.

We subscribe to The Daily Yomiuri, an English language newspaper that gives a good mix of news with a world view.

Grocery
Like all things Japan, the grocery cart is the right height for my 11-year old daughter. At 5' 9" my posture is taking a real hit. The cart is a metal frame that fits two hand-shopping baskets top and bottom. When you return the cart, you pull the baskets out and push the frames together. Some of the carts have a clever child seat built in that would work for a toddler but not an infant. It is an upright seat right below the handles- so the kid is looking at your knees.

It seems like I’m spending twice as much for half the groceries. Everything is packaged in small quantities with the exception of rice – you can get huge bags of rice. Yet rice is expensive (they don’t allow imports). Bread is six slices to a loaf and milk only comes by the quart. The produce is really good… fruits are always full of flavor and veges are fresh. It’s just that quantity thing again. Celery is sold by the stalk (for 128 yen!).

The grocery check-out goes very quickly. The cashier places everything back into your hand basket and stuffs a couple of plastic bags on top. You then carry your basket over to a counter and bag your groceries yourself. Some places have an ice machine by the bagging area, so you can get your fish home. Most places are cash only. If you do find somewhere that accepts a credit card, they always turn to you and ask a question. The response is to raise one finger and say “ichi” (one). The question seems to do with the number of payments you want. The first time I gave them my 4-digit pin number and they were really flustered.


Technology
I tried to figure out the washer, dryer, rice cooker and cell phone within the same 24-hour span. Long day. After I was done with the wash, Dave found the English language manuals that went with all the appliances. Turns out the washer automatically determines how much laundry you have in there. Silly me, trying to select a water level.

We have the strangest parking arrangement. Our apartment has a normal parking lot, except for one side of it has metal sections-- we were allotted spot number six here. Trouble is, when you look at the spaces, there are only odd numbers. No number six. Until you take a small key and insert it into a console. The car in spot five, on top of the metal ramp, is hydraulically raised and the underground spot number six appears and stops at the parking lot level. Holy bat cave, batman! Very interesting, yet a little too clever for its own good. You have to hold the key in place and the lift is very slow, so if it’s pouring down rain or you have to be somewhere in a hurry, this gets old fast.

The toilet really is quite a marvel. The heated seat is a bit much. I imagine it will be wonderful in February, but in August, we wanted nothing more than to turn it OFF (Dave finally figures out). There’s a control arm with buttons to push for a spray of water from the back, below and an air dry. Nice when you have the time. My favorite feature is the sink that is incorporated in the top of the tank. When you flush (forward for a little flush and back for a big flush), the water automatically comes out of the faucet to wash your hands. Very clever. They didn’t build in a place to put the soap, so there is room for improvement.


Shopping
I’ve never been much of a shopper and Japanese stores really drive me nuts. Each area of the store has its own blaring loudspeaker. If you’re unfortunate enough to move between two areas, you really get assaulted. This constant loud noise- sometimes ads and sometimes awful music- is in every store, even the supermarkets. If the idea is to get me out quickly, it’s working.


Driving
I’m getting good a maneuvering these incredibly twisty and narrow back roads. They seem barely manageable for one lane of traffic, never mind two. There are carefully placed concave mirrors so you can see around corners. If someone is coming, you wait for them to pass and give a little head-bob bow as they go by. People drive these little roads fast!

The main road is just busy, busy, busy. Lots of lights. I hold my breath every time I need to make a turn and cross traffic. The right side of my brain still screams out that turning into the left lane is wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm getting used to not listening.