My first full day of work at Shalom Hutte - Wed 18 Apr

From 5am, people started moving around - the woman who makes bread gets an early start.

There was stretching and gentle yoga from 6am, put on whenever there are guests staying at the pension.

Usui san took us on an eco tour of the farm from 7. We were shown the Steiner kindergarten area,

the toilet that creates mulch,

the natural gas-producing 40 gallon drums (not an exciting picture to include, so use your imagination), and a car that uses tempura oil in its engine - the proud bumper sticker, below.

Then we were shown the patchwork of farm, where Usui san explained the issues of pests in monoculture, and demonstrated how vegetables are grown among living weeds to reduce pests, and seeded under decomposing weeds for warmth and to reduce competition from other plants and weeds.



Then the hard work began. I cleaned floors with a rag for an hour.

We stopped at 9 for a Japanese vegan breakfast, which included bread with tahini & miso spread, and mayo made with tofu replacing the eggs.

I made beds in the pension, vacuumed, scrubbed floors. Made some of the tofu mayo, and miso soup from three and four year aged miso paste. Lunch.

I advised a very little kinder kid playing in the yard to be careful, as he was leaning over a drum of water, and asked him if everything was ok. He just stared wordlessly at me open mouthed till I left his sight.

I folded and strung together cardboard boxes to ready them for taking to recycling for ages, other odd jobs. Then dinner.

At night, I chatted with Nobi, who arrived the previous day and is staying until Golden Week, as I am, which is two days public holiday and two days of weekend, four precious days off in a row for the Japanese. I'm heading then to Kamakura to hang out with Take, who showed me around Kyoto and Nara.

Nobi reminds me of Orrong Rd David's sister Jenny, a little in looks and lots in expression and laughter and attitude. She's spent 5 out of the last 10 years overseas, in Canada mainly, and also America and New Zealand. She noted that Japanese people don't readily get together and do something with new people, which she seemed to feel was a bit of a societal character flaw. I'd been trying to get interest for the group of us to go on an outing or do something in our free time, totally unsuccessfully.