At breakfast, it turned out that the delicious goma paste, so much like vegan peanut butter, was just tahini spread and miso paste. Easy peasy Japanesey! At breakfast, I didn't express a preference for work activities for the day, and magically landed a day off!
The group of guests went on a flower-picking expedition, and just after they had left, I happened across one guest who'd missed the departure through being in the loo. It was the woman who had sung the Ave Maria the previous night, which, it turned out, had been impromptu. Saki san drove us around to search for thegroup. We spotted a family of monkeys crossing the road in front of us and stopped for a look. After driving here and there, the opinion surfaced that the flower pickers were likely deep in the woods somewhere, so we stopped at a nearby bakery cafe for some excellent bread treats.
The Ave Maria singer's name is Renata, and she has lived Brazil all her life in a communcal family of home of some ninety Japanese people. She entertained Saki and I with lively stories about her upbringing and lifestyle. Touching on her community's team spirit, she explained they turned a coffee field into a performance hall in ten days when a ballerina visited. Re pest deterrence, she described how a wild animal lives under her stairs that catches snakes, NO idea what it was. About food culture, she described the bread, cooked filled with water-drained yoghurt, olive oil, diced tomatoes, lemon and onion. On cultural differences, she explained how the Japanese in Japan eat in absolute silence - in Brazil, her family likes to chatter to bring air, flavour and fun to the food. She demonstrated how she uses a big ring made for her by her friend to bring interest to her tourism, by catching the colours from its surroundings - here, the fawn of her handmade jumper, there the navy of Saki's apron, up here, the blue of sky, or the imaginary cherry blossoms over there. She was not a typical Japanese woman, gregarious and earthy and warm.
When we arrived back at the ranch, there was about an hour of outdoor self introductions by the group, with people explaining their interesting backgrounds and interests in green, permaculture, peace, etc. One woman, Ayako, who had been translating for the English speaking Satish, talked about her recent collobaration-based albums and the inspirations behind them, and handed out some great cat-and-dog postcards for us to keep. In her self introduction, Renata was so moved by her joy at her experiences at Shalom that she had a little weep.
I got to make a pizza for my lunch - seaweed and soy sauce topping. East meets west? :) For all my practising of base-making on my leg, it was hard, and my pizza was a bit of a runt.
After our lunch, the girls had a hankering for a fresh softserve icecream, and crammed themselves squatting into the tiny back section of Ai's RAV4-like 4WD. I filmed them disentangling themselves.
The softserve store was packed, because the weather was absolutely splendid.
The welcome to the shop.
Three of the girls walked back to continue with work, but Nobi and I, who weren't starting till 5pm, had the luxury of time for a drive. We headed out to a horse riding place for a look and a pet, a winery (NOTHING was drinkable), and a peek at the canola and tulip fields across the road.
Ai's keepsake in her car had a munch on my wasabi cheese.
On the way back to Shalom, we stopped in at a foot spa, with varying grades of rocks embedded in the base for foot massage or foot torture.
It turned out that at 5pm, there was only 5 minutes' worth of kitchen work to do. The staff made Indian-style tempura to coincide with Satish Kumar's visit, down to a thick green mint dipping sauce. I got the recipe, if you're interested.
When I came out of the bath, Satish was leading meditation in the brekky area, in English with a translator, with everyone sitting around in the sunroom and around the dining table on the floor. The meditation was about the breath links all in the room, all people in the world, and all living creatures in the world.
Later, we finally got to have our party, with the supplies that Saki san had bought the previous day.
I put on some music on my laptop, including some singing show-and-tell from my own music. A guest came to use the internet access, then sheepishly returned to partake in the drinks. Everyone tiddled to their personal limits. Kimi had a little face-rest on the table at the end of the night. A fun night.
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