The job so far

Ok, so I realize some people may be wonder what exactly it is that I'm doing here on this orchard, so I'll give you a breakdown of whats been going on. We wake up around 7:00 so that we can have a home cooked Japanese style breakfast prepared by Yoko-san. (Kazu's sister-in-law). After that we do the dishes and then have a little while to get ready for whatever work we are doing that day.

So far we have done:
Weeding around the bases of young fruit trees.
Manual pollination of the plum trees.
Picking blossoms to harvest pollen for manual pollination.
Checking irrigation

We have a break for tea around 10:30 and then we get back to work until lunch. We usually have lunch at a place Kazu calls "The Cat House", which is an area where his two cats Brandy and Mini Mike, hang out. Lunch is generally something ordered from a local shop. Today's meal was Sushi. And when I say "Orderd from a local shop" I don't mean store bought. it just means that somebody in the town other then Yoko made our lunch and Kazu had to go out and pick it up. Lunch lasts for about an hour, and then its back to work until afternoon tea. I don't actually know what time we normally have this, I haven't bothered to check my phone for the time when we break. (My phone can't actually make phone calls in Japan, but I find myself using it's conversion tool quite often.) Our work day ends somewhere around 5:00.

After work we have been taking walks and having Kazu show us around the town. (I don't actually know the name of the town we are in. I know we are in the Yamanashi prefecture, in an area called Minami Alps. The train station I got off at was called either Shiozaki or Shizuoka, but I don't know if that is the town name as well. I'm pretty sure we are a short way east of Kofu though, in case you wanted to find me on a map.) Today we took a walk up a road that switch backed up one of the mountains where the cherry trees grow naturally rather then having been planted by humans. The view would have been great if it wasn't so cloudy. We are expecting rain tonight and tommorow. (We are actually getting the day off tomorrow since conditions are going to be too bad to work in. More on that tomorrow.)

Normally I'd want to add at least one picture here, but since it's already late and it takes quite a while to upload these pictures as is, I'll instead post a link to my Japan album on my Photobucket account. So here ya go! LINK TO JAPAN ALBUM!