I haven’t been able to complain much about 2015 so far — in fact, I might even call it pretty good for reasons I won’t get into here. This past week has been yet another example of 2015’s level of being pretty alright: Two national holidays happened to occur with one day separating them, which, by Japanese law, renders the intermediary day a holiday by default. Not content with providing us with a 3 day holiday, the Gods deemed it fit to have them begin on a Monday, giving us the beautiful 5-day weekend colloquially referred to as Silver Week. Not content to sit on my haunches for all 5 days of this lengthy rest period, I made what I would call 2 excellent decisions that ensured maximum endorphin production: book the tenth of my on-going Blood Rite concert series, and book a stay on an organic farm in Ibaraki. The following recounts these adventures.
Blood Rite is a concert series focused on Japan’s extreme music underground, and began on March 2nd, 2013. While even the first event boasted a rather stellar lineup, over the years its progressively broadened its horizons and played host to a variety of both Japanese and international acts, and for the tenth I wasn’t about to ease up on the throttle. Held at Okubo’s lovely Earthdom, something of a staple of Tokyo & Japan’s underground music world (partly due to the owners’ heavy rep), Blood Rite Vol. 10 featured a delectable tasting of Japan’s vibrant extreme ecosystem: Myocardial infarction-ists Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation, Tantric Black Metal adepts Funeral Sutra, very proper street punks Extinct Government, bell bottom-clad groovy Doom masters Nepenthes, glacial hypnotists Ante-Whales, and last but not least my own band, Retch, which I can’t describe here because I’ve run out of quirky epithets. Suffice to say the line-up was a big draw, the gig had a great turn out, and most appeared to have gone home with aching necks and a bit closer to being inducted to the Hall of Tinnitus. 10/10, will do again.
But how do you follow up such a frenetic evening full of blast beats, overdriven guitars, shrieks, and those revelling in that sonic mess? Why, by going out to the sticks to get your hands dirty working on a farm, of course! There is a network of loosely affiliated groups referred to in whole as WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) that has a rather robust Japan chapter. Through them (membership required!), I was able to secure a host farm up in Shimotsuma city, Ibaraki prefecture. What transpired there was awesome. I arrived at Shimotsuma station mid-afternoon on Sunday, the 20th. As is always the case with leaving Tokyo, the air immediately strikes you as being levels of magnitude more breathable — Delicious, even! — and upon exiting the station, I took a moment to bask in the atmospheric glory of Japan’s inaka. But of course, I needed to make contact. So I whipped out my cell phone, entered the host’s phone number with blinding speed, flicked my hair with the sun filtering through it, and generally over-played the whole act of making a phone call. It rang once… it rang twice… and then the host picked up and said that they’ll be there to pick me up in 15 minutes or so. Pleased with myself, I sat down on a station bench with a decisive thump, and awaited my saviours.
Not even 15 minutes, more like 12, went by when I saw a minivan pull up with a “baby on board” sticker and a woman inside tipping her hat to me from inside. “Of course!” I thought, grabbed my Motörhead bag crammed with too much stuff that I wouldn’t use at all, and gleefully ran to meet my host. I was greeted by the farmer’s cheerful wife and their darling newborn, not yet a year old, 2 of the 4 people with whom I would spend the next three days conversing, working, and perhaps most importantly, once again figuring out how to not feel like an idiot speaking baby-talk in front of adults. The presence of a baby, of course, helped immensely.
After a quick ride back to their house, I disembarked to meet the farmer and another helping hand they had, of Czech origin. The three of us immediately set to washing and bagging the vegetables they had reaped earlier that day, and after that gruelling task we settled into a nice dinner of fresh green beans, chestnuts, peanuts, rice, and a rather conspicuous Kirkland pizza. While eating and drinking (toriaezu beer followed by mizuwari shochu, in true Japanese style), we shared laughs, took turns at making their daughter laugh, and quickly got to know each other, and all seemed well. That, however, was before mention was made of climbing the nearby Tsukuba mountain for sunrise the next morning — then things were great.
We got up at 3AM to make the hour-ish drive to Tsukuba, and after grabbing a few onigiri and our waterbottles, we all piled into the van. The dark outside the City Limits always brings me back to a sane state of mind, as do the stars that accompany it. True to form, Shimotsuma delivered — what a beautiful, and cool, night — we surely are getting into Autumn! On the road, that night, so silent, was broken only by the wind through the open windows whipping past our ears, the engine’s hum, and a poorly tuned radio station. And a few points of conversation, though sparse but not in any sort of awkwardness and more because we had gotten up at 3AM.
The first trail entrance was closed, which did not bode well but we moved on to the next one, trusting that it would let us in. Thankfully, the next parking area didn’t let us down, though it did take a bit of hunting to actually find the entrance — that place had kind of a wonky set-up, if you ask me. We wound our way up the forested mountain with our flashlights lifting the pitch black from the trail (though truth be told I’m wont to turn the light off and let my eyes adjust, so we wound ourselves up the mountain maybe 90% of the way, and tripped the remaining 10%), spotting some very gnarly rock formations and hearing some very gnarly forest noises along the way. Creeped out and loving it, and a good deal more tired than any of us expected, we got to the peak just at sunrise. And without waxing poetic, it really was something: a preambular aura lifting the luminous sphere into the heavens, sunbeams filtering through the many mountains’ troughs like so many tresses of… oh wait, sorry about that. Let me put it this way: my Czech co-WWOOFer took a picture of me which I put on Facebook and everyone said it looked like that one scene from The Lion King where Mufasa is telling Simba that “One day, the sun… will rise with you as the new king.” The result? Now I can’t stop thinking of myself as a future-king lion. AND I’m a Leo! How about that.
After taking in the sights for a sufficient amount of time, we headed back to the farm where we suited up and got down to work. Ibaraki was recently flooded by a substantial amount of rain, and so some of my host’s plots were still in pretty bad shape. We spent most of that day (Monday) unearthing tarps, clearing brush, and rehabilitating those plots. Serious work under the beating sun, and full of thorns and blisters, but there’s something about sinking your hands into the earth that, no matter how much it hurts or how tired you are, is in itself rewarding and you carry on happily.
After spending the day in the thick of it, we returned to the homestead for dinner. The farmer’s wife, a Nagasaki native, had prepared her home prefecture’s Sara-Udon, which is something akin to fried noodles with a Japanese-y stew on top. That paired with drinks (and still more Kirkland pizza…!) made for a very cozy end to a very busy day. Finally, I went to bed with an exhausted body and a full stomach. I sighed contentedly as the crickets’ chirps echoed through the still night, and drifted off to sleep.
The next day was much the same. My Czech co-WWOOFer left that morning, and so the farmer and I spent the majority of the day going around to various plots and harvesting crops. Once we had a significant amount, we went back home and bagged everything to be picked up for delivery in Tokyo. We finished that, had dinner, talked while playing with their daughter, and went to bed. This morning, I woke up only to pack and come home to Tokyo. On the way to the station, we dropped by the Michi no Eki shopping center to grab some omiyage for when I got back to Tokyo. For friends and co-workers, well, they get sweets. For me? 3 bottles of Shimotsuma’s local brewery’s beer — a Red Ale, Golden Pilsner, and White Weizen. Pretty good haul, I think.
What little insight I got into the life of an organic farmer over the 2.5–3 days I spent with them already has affected me, albeit in tiny little ways. I got home, went to the gym, and then went grocery shopping. While in the store, I caught myself noticing the little pieces of tape closing vegetable bags. I did that! Or rather, guided the bag through the very basic tape machine that does it, somewhat ingeniously. But that’s such a minor example of the overall take I got from working with the farmer and his family up in Shimotsuma, Ibaraki: so much gets lost in the big city, cut out in the (justifiable) pursuit of “The Life” that you don’t really notice until it smacks you in the face. Clean air and forests are one thing, laid back people and home cooked meals another, the realisation that my hands are super fragile and I need to go to the gym way more because I’m hurting like you can’t believe after working only 2 days on a farm a third; all of this strikes me as very physical and intimate even, or, to be trite, real, and with it comes a kind of refreshment that can’t really be gotten anywhere else. If that sounds good, look into the program and get out to Japan’s outstanding countryside, where you’ll undoubtedly, almost necessarily, meet some very excellent people. Oh, and listen to heavy metal.