I break for Fuji

Since we had yesterday off we opted to go out and get closer to Fuji. By we, I mean Rachel, Apple, and myself. (Apple is Rachel's friend who came and joined us here at Nakagomi.) We took a bus from Kofu Station (Kazu was kind enough to drop us off there since he had business in Kofu anyway.) to lake Kawakujiko (I think that's what it was called anyway). Apple got off a couple stops before us because she wanted to go to an art museum that was dedicated to a particular artist who draws cats. Apparently Apple loves cats. Sadly it was cloudy when we got there and all we could see was the base of Mt. Fuji. We arrived around noon, and Rachel and I were supposed to meet up with Apple at 2pm. Well, Apple wound up staying at the Museum till 4pm, so Rachel and I had plenty of time to see what was around the lake. There were some nice temples such as this one.


This was one of those accidental finds. We were walking and I looked down an alley and there it was. I've got a bunch more photos of it too. But uploading stuff on this blog takes too long on this connection. So you get limited pictures for now.

Once Apple finally showed up (She and Rachel were in contact via text message, so we didn't actually just sit around and wait for her, we knew when she was coming) her considerable luck rubbed off on us and we finally got to see some more of Fuji. It wasn't a huge amount, but it was the best view we had all day.



Despite the limited view, it was a nice day off and I got a ton of neat pictures of the area, plus some nice ones of the girls, like this one.

(If you look closely you might be able to see Fuji next to the clock. The image is a bit bright though, so it blends in to the sky. Click the image to embiggen)

Anyway, its late and my new roommate is asleep on the chair (More on him later.) Until next time.

~Daniel

Rain rain......

So it was raining today but since It's also going to be raining tomorrow we worked today and have tomorrow off. The girls got assigned the task of cleaning the house. Myself and Eric (our new French WWOOFer) however were tasked with weed whacker duty..... In the rain. Now there are waterproof pants and rain jackets, and rain boots available to us. So we have the means to stay dry at least. However for whatever reason neither Eric nor myself chose to wear the rain boots, and instead wore our leather boots. Mine are steel toe, and the rain pants I have are pretty baggy so I was fine My feet didn't get wet while we were working. However they did get wet when we rinsed off before lunch. And when I say rinsed off, I mean we got sprayed with a hose to get all the grass and mud off our jackets and pants. At that point even my mighty work boots were no match for the moisture, and my socks became rather wet. That wasn't until lunch though, and we only worked for about 2 hours afterwards so it wasn't all that bad from a comfort standpoint. My gloves on the other had were a different story. Because we were weed whacking, I wore my leather gloves. These didn't stand up so good against the rain, so I donned a pair of disposable surgical gloves underneath. Sadly my hands were still rather wet. After lunch I was given a pair of basically dish washing gloves. Surprisingly, these also didn't seem to help much. Its at times like this that I am thankful for my bodies considerable heat output. Despite my wet hands, the rest of my body was fine.

I would have loved to upload a photo of what I looked like after my day of weed whacking in the rain, but sadly I had no way to take a photo of myself in that state without covering my camera in mud and grass, and there was nobody to take the photo for me either. Ah well. After our hard work in the cold rain, Yoko rewarded us with cake. I felt like I just completed some test at Aperture Science (Minus the crazy death maze of puzzles ). And for those of you who have no idea what I was talking about in that last sentence: Don't worry about it, it was a video game reference. Anyway I think that's all for tonight.

~Daniel

Fail....

So I had another oppertunity to go to that second hand store just a few moments ago. I brought my camera this time too. Basicly I was just going so I could take some pictures. But as it turns out, I had left my camera card in my computer because I was about to upload stuff when Keichi knocked on my door/window to ask if I wanted to go. So I had my camera and no memory card. Lacking means to take pictures, I spent my time taking a closer look at the figurine section. I think I figured out their sorting system, but I didn't find anything else that I wanted (either for myself or a gift).

So lacking pictures of that store, I will instead bring you some photo's of the orchard. I've decided to take a picture of the cat house (the name of one of the cherry orchards) every day from the same spot so I can eventually make a kind of "as time passes" thing illustrating the change in the orchard from blossoms to fruit, so look forward to that. Here is one of those right now in fact.

(Click to embiggen)

This one is of one of the apple groves. We were working here pretty much all day today actually.

text!

The connection isn't stable enough for pictures right now, so just a text update tonight. Yesterday My roommate Greg left early in the morning. (Sorry, I haven't been keeping up with the comings and goings of the other WWOOFers very well.) Greg was from Belgium, although he was born in America and attends a College in New York. He could speak English, French, and Japanese. (Maybe one or two others, but that's what I heard him speaking while he was here.) He was the first person who was a native English speaker, so it was nice to be able to talk to him. The European couple also spoke English, but I wasn't roommates with them, so I didn't talk to them quite as much as I did Greg.

The European couple was pretty awesome too. Jess was from England, and Anthony was French. I had never actually had the chance to talk to a native French person at any length before. Most of my previous impressions of them were pretty stereotypical ones that I got through the media and Eddie Izzard. It was nice to be able to form my own opinions (granted it's a small sample, but they're all positive opinions). I'll try to get pictures of everybody up in the next couple days. Maybe I'll do some WWOOFer bios or something. I don't know.

As for work yesterday, we were thinning apple blossoms all day. Normally this would be fine, but it was made a little more difficult due to bad weather. It was drizzling all day which meant wet and cold hands, as well as a bit of mud on our ladders. But we all had rain pants and jackets, so we were dry at least. (Except for our hands of course.) Today was also apple blossom picking and pollination, but the weather was much better. It was actually warm today. Although it got windy in the afternoon and got cold. (Fortunately I carry my trusty orange snowboard jacket, as well as the fleece that was given to me at Christmas with me in my backpack.)

Well, once again its bed time (On time tonight)

~Daniel

Fun in the Rain

I thought that would be a nice way to open this post. Anyway we had yesterday off due to rain and got to go around with Keichi (Or maybe it's Kenichi, I'm not sure at this point) and see some stuff in the area. Our first stop was a town done in what was apparently Swiss style after an anime called "Heidi, Girl of the Alps". The place had a very impressive tulip garden. It was mostly an outdoor place, and since it was raining it was just us. Unfortunately I kept getting raindrops on my lens so lots of my pictures aren't that great.



After our trip to the Swiss alps, we had lunch at Dennys. Now when I first saw the sign I thought to myself "Dennys? Really? I do this at home all the time." Well, as it turns out, Denny's in Japan is way more awesome. To start with, the menu is 15 pages long, mostly of Japanese style food, but they had some super delicious looking stuff that stood out. I went ahead and ordered two of them. One was this crazy chocolate sunday, and the other was mango pancakes. They were both incredibly tasty. Here are pictures, try not to drool on the keyboard.



After that we headed to the big shrine located near Yamanashi University, who's name I've totally forgotten. It was a nice place but what made it for me was the little museum located on site. Inside was some old Samurai armor and weapons. (I love this kind of stuff) of course there were scrolls and riding gear and fans and stuff, but I was too busy staring at the Spears and helmets to really take much notice. Unfortunately no photo's were allowed inside.

That's Rachel with her little stuffed chicken outside the Gate to the shrine. (You can also see Keichi standing under the gate) I found this picture particularly appropriate because there were chickens hanging out inside the shrine itself to get out of the rain.

Oh yeah, This was also outside the museum. Now I know Hello Kitty is popular, but I didn't think it had made it so far as to earn a statue at a shrine. This thing was carved out of stone and sitting right outside of the museum at the shrine.

After the shrine we headed to the big shopping mall. From the outside it looked way bigger the the Santa Rosa mall. But I think that was mostly because the parking structure was attached to the mall. (It was actually on the roof) But judging from how long it took me to get around inside, it was only a little bit bigger the the one at home. But still, I got to see some nifty Japanese style shops. The clothing stores are basically the same, but all the rest was pretty interesting. Got some gifts for people and some stuff for myself.

The rest of the day involved going to an onsen and then dinner back at the Orchard, followed by relaxing at the house. I spent some time showing Anthony some AMV's (anime music video). Turns out that he's a manga fan, so I showed him some that involved his favorites. He hadn't seen any before I don't think, but it seemed like he really liked them.

Before I end this for tonight, I just wanted to mention what was going on in the news here yesterday. The big story was this: Some farmer got their box of bees stolen. Today there was a Some kind of City wide announcement over loudspeaker by the bee company and it seems like everybody had to take their bee boxes back for inspection or something. It was hard to translate with it echoing off the mountains combined with the sound lag between the different speakers. But yeah, bees are serious business.

Good night,

~Daniel

Arcane arts

We have today off due to rain, and it sounds like we are going to an onsen and some other places in about 20 minutes here which is nice. Unfortunatly Viola is also leaving today which is dissapointing. She has been here longer then me so far, and functions kind of like the mother of all the WWOOFers because she has the best Japanese. (She can actually hold a full conversation with Obaa-chan) She is also the oldest out of the group, though she does not look her age. At any rate, she didn't tell me when she was leaving until yesterday morning. And I wanted to get her a gift before she left, but there was no time to go out and find something to buy, so I figured I'd have to make her something. Given my limited resources, this is what I came up with.:
Now, I haven't made a dream catcher since I was a kid. And even then I always made them from kits that came with a steel ring, leather, feathers, beads, and twine. This was my first time making one from scratch. The frame is reeds that I yanked off of a bush on one of the abandoned farms in the area. The string was out of Obaa-chan's basket. (Not exactly ideal material for this, but it worked. Thanks to Rachel for helping me tie some knots) The stone in the center is out of the garden in front of Kazu's house. (It was dark when I was looking for one, so I had to feel out for one that would work. I think I got a pretty good one though.) Lacking hawk feathers or anything like that, the feathers at the bottom are actually out of one of the feather dusters we use to pollinate the trees with. (There is actually still a bit of pollen in them.)

If you don't know what a dream catcher is, I'll give a brief explanation. They are a Native American craft meant to protect against bad dreams. All dreams pass through, but the dream catcher is supposed to catch the bad ones and store them in the stone in the center.

At any rate, I'll miss having her around, but now she can have a bit of Nakagomi Orchard watching over her as she sleeps.

~Daniel

Clear at last

Well, Mostly anyway. We finally had a nice view of Fuji while I had my camera on me. I wish Raime were still here though, because I'm sure she could have showed me how to take a better picture of it. (She had the exact same camera, but with a better lens. The main difference though was that she actually knew what all the camera's functions and settings were) Still, It is by no means a bad photo, so enjoy it.

(Click to embiggen)

On this same day I came across a first for me. A Japanese snack food that I didn't like at all. They were made by Fritolay, and looked a lot like Funions. However, this particular snack's main ingredient/flavor was mayonnaise. Yeah..... I wasn't too thrilled with these. Near as I can figure, this package reads "MAYO MANIA".

I would also like to take section of this post as a reminder to myself to always bring my camera with me whenever we go anywhere here in Japan.
Just today we went to what was described to us by Keichi as a "second hand store". Well they do second hand right here in Japan. This wasn't some little thrift shop. This was a 24 hour a day mega store of merchandise that happened to have been owned by somebody else at some point. And I forgot my camera in my room. I have some photo's that I took with my phone. (I had forgotten that it can do nifty stuff like play movies, music, and take picture and video until yesterday when I used it to listen Dr. Tran while I was working alone.) But the quality probably isn't very good, and extracting the photo's from my phone requires removing the battery and sim card. (I don't have the cable with me, so I have to copy them to a card.) There were about a hundred things that I would have loved to take pictures of If I'd had my camera with me. Hopefully I'll get to go back before I leave and be able to spend more then an hour there. (I didn't even get to explore the whole place in the hour I had)

As an added bonus Keichi bought us Crepes. That guy is awesome. I wish we were able to communicate more. But his English is mostly limited to giving directions and information regarding work on the orchard. And my Japanese is about the same at this point. (I have determined that Katatsu means Ladder in Japanese. We use them a lot.)

But yeah, the lesson is, always carry the camera. Because when you do, you get to catch fun stuff like this.

At least those mayo rings were good for some laughs. (Actually everybody else loved 'em. Asian's seem to love Mayo. As I have mentioned before, I do not.)