At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

27 September 2023

Second, Entertaining Day of Working at the Farm

I woke at 5:50, my shoulders and lower back sore. At 7:00, I got out of bed and ate breakfast.

Whenever I asked Obaachan how I could help while she was cooking, she said, “by eating.”

Then, whenever we would eat just us two, she would break into an hour-long lecture, start eating long after I was finished, be done after two bites, and then do the dishes.

The topics she introduced me to were educative – the importance of food, work, family, gratitude, religion – yet her rapid stream of complex words made me borderline dizzy.

She always refused to let me do the dishes.

Every morning, from now on, I would put on workers’ overall, sunscreen, a hat, gloves, and thigh-high boots. Obaachan drove us to the cabbage field as if we were fugitives.

This morning, however, while catching cabbages in the field, I dropped one for the first time.

“Kesem, no lunch for you,” Obaachan joked.

H, one of the sons, explained something in her Japanese here for me.

“I’m a Japanese teacher,” he said earnestly.

「噓！嘘！」Obaachan yelled. (“Lies!”)

Japanese people were notorious for not understanding sarcasm. Yet here was this prankster family, showing me a different side to this country.

Even Saki, who spoke English fluently and had travelled to fifty countries, sometimes missed my sarcasm.

The family hadn’t been using the polite request form with me, either. Rather, the command form. “Come here! Eat this! Wake up! Take this!” Not in a rude, militant way, but simply in a “no need to be polite with you because we’re too close for that” way.

I filled the okome containers again today, before and after the two hours of catching cabbages in the field. Thank god. I would take anything over packing cabbages.

When I did so with H this time around, he didn’t even bother to put on a mask.

Before I went to bed, I looked outside the window in my room. The stars didn’t seem as visible here as they’d been on Rebun island. Instead, road lamps were blinking red every few seconds.

Today’s highlight: Japanese sarcasm.

Stray observations:

• Do Japanese people not drink WATER? I have not seen the family do so even once. Only tea, coffee, and miso soup.
• How come Japanese people keep saying “senkyu” (“thank you” in a Japanese accent) to me in Round Two, but never during Round One?

List of of Japanese hand gestures I’ve been compiling:

• Raising and lowering the fingers of a palm facing someone to call them. Overseas, this meant “go away”, while “come here” was communicated by facing the palm toward yourself. The farmers were probably the first Japanese people who used this beckoning gesture with me, because foreigners usually misunderstand it.
• Pointing at the noise (or generally in the direction of your face) to signify talking about yourself.
• Waving the arm slightly near your chest to signify a negative answer. 
• Crossing the arms to signify something forbidden.
• Joining your hands together in prayer to signify receiving.
• Hand cutting through the air while passing through.
• Lazily raising a hand over your head to signify stop. Again, a gesture I haven’t sxeen before the farm stay. Overseas, you always presented a palm facing forward like in a stop sign.

28 September 2023

Third, Frustrating Day of Working at the Farm

Today over breakfast, Obaachan asked me to cancel my reservation for this weekend.

She said I’d have to work every day during my stay here. Then she broke into a lecture about how the family couldn’t afford to take a day off, because their livelihood depended on farming.

When I’d checked out of a special ryokan in Daisetsuzan – the highest one in Hokkaido, featuring my favourite rotenburo in Japan – the day after my birthday, the guide and I expressed how we’d like for me to return someday and go on another trek. I’d known back in mid-February that I would return there if I ever set foot in Hokkaido again.

And indeed, on May 8, the day before I’d left Japan, I’d contacted the ryokan, asking for a room during peak autumn foliage. They’d even suggested letting me sleep in one of the staff rooms, so as to lower the price of my stay.

This was out of the question now. I might be able to go there after the farm stay, but that would in all likelihood be past the peak.

I told Obaachan I would cancel all my plans, and filled with regret.

Hokkaido was my favourite region in Japan. My list for my one-month return here was endless. Now, I wouldn’t be able to complete even half of it.

Cabbage catching in the field this morning was just four of us, instead of the usual five. Obaachan, H, N, and me. I dropped a cabbage, like yesterday, and caught a few in a rough way that made them break.

Obaachan grew a bit frustrated with me. She tried to explain how to catch them more delicately, but this was out of my ability. H always caught them with one palm, and so handled two at a time.

“Do it like Kamehameha,” Obaachan said. As in, Dragon ball.

My mind was racing as I tried to follow her advice. I could’ve spent a few more nights at the Cowboy’s and then stayed at the Biei ojiisan’s house near Daisetsuzan. That would’ve saved me money and granted me great company. But once my friends asked the farmers to accept me, and an invitation was extended, I hadn’t wanted to refuse it, nor ask for them to make changes. I’d told them I’d had plans made long ago for Daisetsuzan, but no one had approved of them, nor said this would be okay. I’d foolishly assumed that, upon hearing I’d never seen autumn foliage, they’d allocate some precious time for me to do so.

For the umpteenth time, I learned that I could not assume anything about people. I could only rely on myself. When I did so my plans worked out as intended, or even better. When I assumed someone would do something for me – help me find a job like they’d promised or stay in touch with me like they’d promised or let me sightsee or offer to host me

But I couldn’t say anything. I knew how weak I sounded. This family was working every day to make ends meet.

Instead, I did my best to properly catch the cabbages thrown at me, and organize them in the steel cages in a way that maximized their amount.

I had no time to myself here. We spent every task, every break together. They liked to talk; I couldn’t act anti-social around them. They barely used their phones; I couldn’t use mine around them. I couldn’t embarrass my friends, who had set this arrangement for me.

Saki was so excited upon hearing that I’d work here. I couldn’t make it seem as though he’d sent them a weakling. Least of all in Japan. A country where 「頑張ります」(“I will do my best and overexert myself”) was one of the most used, daily words.

In my three days here, the family had asked me several times if I’d had an international driver’s license. I had. Today, I wanted to ask them if they could teach me how to drive on the opposite side of the road, around the fields. A perfect opportunity for me to practice. Now, I didn’t want to ask for anything. I didn’t want to sound greedy. Only to do as I was told.

I already knew that I would value my time at the farm. It was a teaching experience about the hardships of life. It made me appreciate the food on my table; forced me to toughen up. But the fact that it came during the week in Hokkaido I’d been looking forward to the most – more than any other – dampened my spirits.

It wasn’t the hard work. It was the timing.

Reality was, I’d come into a world where money was as vital as water and vegetables. One ought to pick them up from fields and sort them into containers in order to live. This was a boring yet vital profession to us humans. And the family was taking it in stride.

Whereas me… I would take two months, six months, seven months of pining after someone over boredom. I would take years of failing to publish my fiction and find a readership over boredom. I would take intellectually-stimulating pangs, such as conundrums and heartache, over dulling pain.

I tried to look at the glass half full. The last time I’d eaten this many vegetables and hadn’t gone hungry after meals and between them was in Israel, in January. I was enjoying fantastic cooking and rare company, for a foreigner like me, for a foreigner like me. I wasn’t spending any money. I had a bed to sleep in.

At 11:00, we returned to the cabbage warehouse for a tea break. They asked me until when I would stay.

“I don’t know,” I said, confused. Hadn’t we already agreed on Thursday, October 5^th?

Perhaps the date was as fixed as I’d thought. Perhaps the family had noticed how disappointed I was, despite my attempts at hiding it. They’d asked me to contact the ryokan and ask if I could move the date, as well as inquire after peak foliage, so that I would get to witness it.

I regained my hope. Perhaps I could leave before the 5th.

As I helped Obaachan return the tea and cups to the house, she stopped on the doorstep.

“Contact the ryokan and let us know,” she said. “You can stay as long as you’d like.”

「よろしくお願いします」I bowed. (An important Japanese phrase that literally meant, “Please be good to me”.)

“No, no,” she said. 「助かりました。」 (“You saved us.”)

「こちらこそ」(“It is I who should say so.”)

After this, I felt rejuvenated. I packed cabbages for half an hour. Then it was time for lunch.

I managed to write during my 1-hour break. Then packing again.

Ever since we’d returned from the fields this morning, it had been drizzling nonstop.

Ojiisan came after a while and told me to change to waterproof overalls. We drove back to the field. Him, N, H, S, and I filled seven containers. Perhaps our mere five containers from this morning explained why there was a round two today.

Even though it was raining all the while, and my hands grew cold inside my gloves, I felt relieved to catch more cabbages, rather than pack them.

Malfuctions and Marvels

We returned to the warehouse and carried on. At some point, the sky began to clear. The family told me to take a look at the view outside.

A double rainbow.

for them, it was beautiful sight, but not unusual. For me, it was a first.

“Japan in Japanese is called Nihon. Ni also means two, and hon is also a counter for long, thin objects,” H said. “That’s why we have double rainbows.”

(Or maybe because Japan was secretly gay.)

He repeated this in earnest until I bellowed 「やめて」(“stop it”) and we laughed. Refreshing sarcasm. Nihon, the name of Japan, meant sun + origin.

We continued packing cabbages until Obaachan told me to finish for today at 17:00, half an hour earlier.

She, Ojiisan, and I ate an early dinner. Then, at 18:45, Ojiisan took me to a nearby onsen, famous for its coffee-coloured spring water.

My eyes lit up as soon as I heard that.

It was my first time in four days of leaving the farm. Four days of inhabiting the same place and spending no money.

We drove through the quiet countryside. It was derelict and dark. He explained that the blinking red arrows above the road pointed at which side to drive on, when too much snow covered it at winter.

At the intersection leading to the onsen, by a local train tracks and signs of the onsen, the car engine stopped running.

The car was an expensive 4×4 with its own TV screen (a dangerous feature that, in the Land of Safety, baffled me). Ojiisan said this was the first time this sort of thing had happened.

He added that bears sometimes roamed this area.

At 19:15, S came to pick us up. He’d attended an English cram school nearby.

We returned to the farm. I was a bit let down. But what was another disappointment, by now.

After soaking in their ofuro, I was writing inside my room, when Obaachan called me outside.

“Keseeeeeeeen!”

She showed me the full moon. It was shining as brightly as the last time I’d beheld it, while climbing Mt Fuji. So bright, that I could discern its craters. A gleaming ball of grey and pearl-white.

We turned on our spot. The darker part of the sky offered more stars than I’d imagined. Obaachan said autumn was the best time of the year for our view.

I understood why, during lunch today, she’d told me she was allergic to cities. During one of my nocturnal roams with the British student in late April, Tokyo’s unnaturally bright sky took me by surprise. Even when sitting by a river in the northern outskirts in the dead of night.

When we returned indoors, Obaachan unsheathed several family albums. I leafed through them. Old pictures of the family working at the farm, of vacations and weddings. Dirty workers’ uniform and impromptu picnics at the fields on the one hand, elaborate kimonos and expensive teishoku on the other.

Ojiisan returned home, and said the car was dead.

At 21:30, I excused myself, and went to bed. I wanted a proper night’s sleep for a change.

I turned off the light and opened the window. Cool autumnal breeze and the chirping of crickets. I listened to the song from my previous post, which I’d published during my lunch break. I’d been listening to it lately nonstop.

I remember us alone
Tasting you like alcohol [...]
I could call your phone just to hear your voice [...]
I still think of you cause I’ve got no choice
I still think of you cause I’ve got no choice
I could run away but I won’t get far
Meet somebody new, let her break my heart
I still think of you cause I’ve got no choice [...]
I know that you already moved on
You wеre gone beforе I knew it
Just to come back like a song
On and on in my head [...]
I still think of you cause I’ve got no choice

Then I played another song, by Fiona apple. Its lyrics, particularly after my phone calls a few days ago to Korea, matched my mental state and geographical location.

On this cold night, in my tiny bedroom, large enough for a bed – with my blanket too thin to warm me, and the window foggy with condensation – my body was aching with ennui and chores, lovelorn distractions, and disappointment. At this moment in time, I was just a lonely farmer, dreaming of someone special.

Today’s highlights: my first double rainbow; the full moon; listening to the above songs at night in bed.

29 September 2023

Fourth, Bittersweet Day of Working at the Farm

Last night, I slept from 22:00 to 6:30, and finally got some sleep. Then, after breakfast, the family told me I could leave on Monday instead of Thursday, since Tuesday would be the only sunny day of the week in Daisetsuzan. I couldn’t be more grateful.

We packed cabbages from 8:30-9:15 and then picked them up in the field until 10:00. Obaachan and I also picked a few daikon.

Maybe it was too hot for everyone, maybe everyone was tired from this workweek and impatient for the weekend, but we took a break until 10:40, quite early.

At 11:25, a storm suddenly broke out. Out of the blue sky. Cloudy, blustery, every cage and door and machinery inside the cabbage warehouse rattling. The rain was practically horizontal.

We ate lunch a little before noon. For some reason, everything was earlier today.

I changed my plans for next week during my lunch break. Then 1 hour of helping Ojiisan prepare new cages for okome. They were sharp and jagged, old and rusty, heavy and dusty. We unfolded a cage, which was quite heavy to lift, filled it with an enormous sack, and tied knots all around it. My hands were covered in dirt and dust, while my fingers grew craggy.

This was followed by 1 hour of packing cabbages. A 30-minute break at 15:30. And a 1.5 hour of more packing cabbages.

At 17:30, Obaachan and I returned home.

“In the future, you can come back anytime as a guest,” she said. “Come visit us. You’re part of the family.”

S called us to step outside. The full moon was rising over the distant mountains. It was very low in the sky, much closer than in its prime. This made it seem bigger than usual – even bigger than last night’s.

I could spot the craters unbelievably well. My camera couldn’t capture them.

It was a marvellous sight. Potentially the largest moon I’d seen. H showed up and grew excited as well. This was a daily topic for the family. Nature.

They truly led a more naturalistic lifestyle. In the city, one tended to forget about such sights.

Dinner included a daikon salad and a tamago filled with carrot, spinach, cheese, and sake. Heaven.

I caught up with my Ukrainian friend on the phone afterwards. The struggles she was going through were innumerable. Trouble at work, grieving over her dead lover, war in Ukraine… to name a few.

“I don’t even have the energy to change my situation,” she said. “I don’t have the energy to do anything.”

I thought about the heavy balloon from my previous post. Like my friends in Korea, I suspected she was carrying one as well.

“Life is infuriatingly bittersweet,” she’d texted me the other day.

I found it hard to fall asleep after our phone call. Despite my increasing agricultural exhaustion, I probably dozed off at 23:00 or so.

Today’s highlight: the giant, low moon.