rice harvesting and a harvesting festival. Harvesting looked like this:
The foreign home stay participants and several members of the community gathered around the
outer edges of a rice field, armed with small, curved, serrated knives and began cutting. It's
fairly easy. The rice grows in clumps small enough to grasp at the roots using one hand. The procedure is to grab the stalks near the root and
then use the small knife to cut completely through the clump.
The next step is to tie together a large bundle of cut stalks using old
dried stalks. Finally, the tied bundles are hung upside down on a makeshift wooden stand, where they will dry out and later be used for sake ("sa-kay")!
The home stay was another story...
Somehow there was a mistake translating my documents and I was reported to have been in Japan for 1 year, which puts my expected Japanese language abilities much higher than the actual skills I have acquired in the mere one month I have been here. So, I was put with a host family that didn't speak English. Luckily, I had a roommate named Emily who is from Seattle and teaching English in another city. She has been in Japan for 6 months and can carry on basic conversation. Unfortunately for me, Emily's language abilities did not include the ability to translate. So the first night was a rough one. While Emily and my host mom chatted away, I plotted out all of the possible ways I could get back to Moka: fake sick, run away, fake a family emergency, break the law...
However, things took a positive turn Saturday morning when I woke up refreshed and eager to bridge the language barrier. I decided to completely disregard any fear of making mistakes or looking foolish.
In the morning, we were dropped off at the rice harvest festival, where we could speak English with all the other foreigners (though they were from ALL over the world, they all spoke English). This definitely encouraged me to be my usual, outgoing self.
After the festival, I was ready to chat it up, however primitive my means of communications might be. And it paid off. Through gestures and simple English and Japanese, my host mother and I were able to communicate in the most basic form! It was a glorious accomplishment for both of us.
My host mother's good friend was also hosting a foreigner for the weekend, so we met up with them and spent most of the weekend together. (The other homestay participant, Chee Tuck, is from Malaysia, can speak 5 languages and helped me translate just about EVERYTHING. He has a special place in my heart.) The Japanese host families had some really great things in store for us!
We participated in a traditional Buddhist meditation class, where we sat cross-legged for 40 minutes meditating in the dark peaceful shrine (praying to and worshipping Jesus in my case!), with the understanding that if we slouched or dozed off, the instructor would hit us with a stick and chastise us. It put a new spin on my prayer time... It is also note worthy to mention that my entire left leg, from hip to toes, fell asleep about 5 minutes into things, and there was one specific moment where I told Jesus that if he didn't make my leg work when meditation time was over, I was certain I would never be able to walk again.
After the meditation time, we participated in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, or "sado." It was really cool! After the tea party we had a traditional Japanese Buddhist monk meal.
I'm not sure I would ever have the chance to experience these things apart from this homestay weekend. It was a fantastic experience. It was really beautiful to see how much time and effort the host families put in to making this weekend something really special for us.
All in all - Home Stay Weekend in Nakagawa gets rave reviews!
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