Arrival at Komeichi Farm, a mouse, miso, and a cat hat - Mon 7 May

After a day catching up on postcards and blog writing, and getting stared at a lot for being a tall white person in Japan's Wangaratta, I caught a train out to Uchita station, half an hour out from Wakayama city. While I waited for Kayoru from the host to come to pick me up, I had another of the delicious Seventeen Ice icecreams from the vending machine at the little station. Some schoolgirls sitting on the ground nearby tried out a giggly "Haroo". Boys wearing baseball uniforms, passing by on identical bicycles, just stared.

Kayoru drove me back through very rural areas, packed with small scale fields, to Komeichi Farm. The farmhouse described in the WWOOFing material as 100 years old, is put more to functional than aesthetic use. Kayoru's mum, known as "okaasan" to all in the household, and Kayoru's brother, 21 year old Yohei, live permanently in the farmhouse, while Kayoru lives in a nearby town, but visits for a few hours each day. Kayoru's little feller Subaru, 11 months old, is a chewing machine, though not quite so strong yet on swallowing the chewed up food

I met Takki, 26, who has been WWOOFing here at the farm for a month, and wants to stay another six months. He aspires to a farm of his own. He's cheery and chatty, asking lots of questions about Australia.

There was a bit of excitement when we spotted a mouse, and so did one of the cats.

When okaasan came back from her job at the nursing home, she chattered away merrily. She believes my Japanese skills are slightly better than they are, but it's a good challenge to keep up. She is an oral historian, and is interested in the preservation of cultural history. She's full of interesting tidbits about old Japan, which my Japanese gets me about 70% access to, depending on whether I want to interrupt for vocab, or get a general picture and go with the flow. She has quite a strong Kansai accent, and has an endearing habit of talking seemingly with her eyes closed - I haven't figured out yet if they are or not.

She offered to make miso paste from rice and beans over the days that I'm here, which interested me a lot. Miso can be made by fermenting a variety of ingredients, including beans, white rice, It's a multi-step process, of soaking and steaming rice, adding rice yeast, keeping it warm, adding soaked and steamed beans, then mashing, before leaving for a few months to a few years to let the flavour develop.

Okaasan measures out the rice into a carrying container.

Here, we're using a machine (to the left behind okaasan in the above picture) to husk the brown rice, as white rice takes the yeast better.

When Yohei came back from discussions with a friend, we had a getting to know you chat. He explained he's been growing onions, but they'd sprouted flowers in their first year, rendering them unsaleable to the general public, and costing him $6000 in onion sales.

There are four cats living with the family. One of the old ones joined me in the night, somehow, through closed rice paper partition doors. It snortled and groaned, and repeatedly snuggled into the side of my head for warmth and love. I didn't have the best night's sleep.