Big crop haul and some errands - Tue 12 Jun

Got another early start on my tshirt-tan this morning from 6am, picking snow peas, a TON of brocolli (appropriate to cry out, "GETTO-!" = "Score!", i.e. 'get'), and various salad herbs for three hours at a rapid pace with Kino and her mum. My lower back still bloody kills from yesterday's cropping and weed slashing.

Mrs Inami made chocolate bread for breakfast, yum.

After brekky, we washed and packed the choice brocolli and snow peas and the salad herbs into five boxes, 1800 yen in the pocket each after delivery costs of 700 yen per box. It didn't seem like much per box, considering all the labour gone into it just today in the picking, washing and packing alone, let alone planting and maintaining the crops, but Kino said it was much more than if it was sold at a farmer's market.


After pasta with sweet fresh brocolli and onion for lunch, I had what turned out to be a three hour nanna nap while Kino delivered some the excess snow peas and brocolli to the local hotel restaurant, making 27000 yen. When Kino called me to get up, I felt like I was getting up in the middle of the night. It might well have been the next morning that I'd overslept. I was dopey for ages..

We went to pick onions - Kino's best onion harvest ever -

and also trimmed and trained tomato plants. An earlier finish today, at 6pm.

The courier firm came to pick up the five boxes of vegies as we were bringing back the onions. I love their logo.


Then we all hopped in the family car and went on some errands, many for me. The car has a cool reversing camera plus digital overlay that shows the direction you'll head based on the current turning of the steering wheel. Very useful and a nifty gadget!


One of our stops was a 100 Yen Shop - it's cool cheap thing paradise.

Saw a love hotel with English-style castle walls and turrets, topped by what I think was the Statue of Liberty. It was dark by then.

We had ramen out for dinner. I was still on a quest to have a last meal of delicious super fatty pork slices with noodles in a milky soya broth, because I'd had absolutely delicious ones in Ueno in Tokyo and in Osaka. The two that I'd tried since coming back to Tokyo were nasty, disappointing failures. This third try was pretty good, and I can put the quest to rest.


We went to 'Book Off,' a CD and book/manga store, and I bought a J-pop gift CD for Jason's coming birthday.

We went to a supermarket. I have a particular foodstuff that I want to bring back to Australia. No luck at that supermarket. I did treat myself to a can of Kirin's Grapefruit Chuu-Hai booze, which I've grown quite fond of. For something like a dollar fifty, it gives you a nice little tiddle.

Last stop before home and a soak in the bath was a convenience store, to collect my bus ticket to the airport from a super-ooper-multi-self-service machine called Roppi.

Tomorrow, no cropping. A sleep-in till 7am! Luxury.