This year's Golden Week fell near the weekend, so instead of heading to Japan's northern most island of Hokkaido, I opted for somewhere a bit closer... Nagano prefecture. Of course it's famous for being a former host of the olympics, but Nagano is also famous for *apples*. So it wasn't hard to find a family of apple farmers who were willing to take in a
WWOOF volunteer for a couple days.
The Nakamura's are lovely people- very generous, friendly, direct, and they share my love for travel. They have also been to Chennai, India, but unlike me, they took the opportunity to study Yoga pretty seriously. Now they teach a class every Thursday. I was soooo grateful for the Yoga class! I had left the house at 5:00 am, and spent the entire day on buses and trains to get to their town outside of Matsumoto city.
There is an apartment for young workers, and volunteers, so I stayed there with two Japanese women who both want to have their own farms someday. We got along really well, especially since we all like to cook. So we spent our free time cooking, hanging out with Kuro-chan the cat, and chatting through mix of Japanese and English. Friday night's dinner was okonomiyaki- which neither of the girls often eat, so I was the cook. It was pretty fun to be cooking Japanese food for Japanese people. I guess they just don't eat it very much up in the Nagano area. We also made applesauce from scratch sunday morning. oh my god that stuff is good. If you've never made it from scratch, you should. Your whole house will smell like apple pie!! Just make sure to use Fuji-style apples :)
Since it's May and not October, my work on the farm had nothing to do with apples and everything to do with the pretty little apple flowers. I spent both working days with Tomomi, as she taught me which flowers to prune. We worked with the little baby trees you see below, picking most of their flowers, to make sure new branches would grow in the right places next season. You'd think farming might be really hard work, but I loved being outside in the sun and getting to look at cute trees all day. Plus, there were plenty of breaks! Tea time at 10, lunch at noon, and another tea time at 3pm. We hung out with the whole crew you see above during tea time breaks. That's Grandfather Nakamura you see in the middle.
I was horribly underdressed for farming, and was on my way to yet another sunburn. Someone noticed my head's nekkidness though, and lent me a hat. Too bad I didn't get the cute little farming sleeves too ;)
Sunday was a nasty rainy day, and I had to head home for work on Monday. But before that, the Nakamura's took me to a couple art museums and the Matsumoto castle. They even treated me to lunch at a pizza place called "Seattle". The decor was impressive; the most un-Japanese restaurant I've seen here. There were tons of American knick-knacks on display, hanging from rafters, sitting on the shelves behind the bar looking into the kitchen, etc. Being the apple expert he is, Mr. Nakamura jokingly pointed out that an old-fashioned apple basket was advertising California apples, not Washington state apples.
This guy really does know his stuff though. He started an international organization to celebrate the Fuji apple, and it's Japanese origin. He organizes an annual conference, bringing apple growers from all over the world to gather in Nagano. I was honored to be learning about apple farming from this guy. Too bad I can't accept the invitation to come back in October for the real working season.... or the Fuji Marathon (>_<) !
Here I am with Mrs. and Mr. Nakamura outside one of Matsumoto's art museums, and there's the beautiful 400 year old Matsumoto castle below.
