"The Farm At Higashi Kushira."
Saturday 13 October. Day 79. A fine day with a breeze. Expected top 27 degrees.
After breakfast, Shouko had to go to work.
We helped Toshiharu clean the house. The futons were hung outside to air. The tatami was vacuumed. Shoes were also put outside for an airing and the genkan (where you step up out of your shoes into your house slippers) was swept and cleaned.
Let's diverge with Colin for a minute.
In Japan, there are formalities associated with shoes of which we in Oz are largely ignorant. That the shoe rules are generally a "good idea" with mental and physical benefits, Colin hopes you can appreciate from his following explanation.
In the genkan, which is an entrance porch about a foot below the normal floor level, people entering the house step out of their shoes (lace-ups are a distinct disadvantage) and into slippers waiting just above the genkan. Then a foot (leaving its slipper behind) deftly reaches down and arranges the shoes so that their owner when leaving the house can step straight out of the slippers, off the floor, into the waiting shoes.
The slippers are worn throughout the house, saving two important exceptions.
There are special slippers to be worn in the toilet but nowhere else. These toilet slippers are either on someone's feet in the toilet, or waiting at the toilet door. If there are no slippers outside the toilet door, you know the toilet is engaged. It is a major social blunder to wear the toilet slippers anywhere but in the toilet.
Likewise, only sock clad or bare feet go into tatami mat rooms; slippers are left at the door. advertising the room's occupation.
Emerging from a toilet reverie one afternoon, Colin was shocked to find himself wearing the toilet slippers in the tatami mat room. Returning to the toilet at better than the speed of light has enabled him to conceal the crime up to this point.
For lunch, Ritsuko cooked "Yakisoba" which is like fried rice but with soba noodles taking the place of the rice. It was delicious so I have included a recipe. Quantities to serve four persons.
Cook 250 g soba noodles in lots of boiling water. Drain.
Heat one tablespoon of sesame oil and one table spoonful of peanut oil in a large frying pan.
In the hot oil stir-fry 330 g of minced pork. Remove the fried pork.
Add anther tablespoonful of peanut oil to the frying pan and stir-fry 1 brown onion previously cut into eight wedges, 1 squashed clove of garlic, 1 teaspoonful of grated green ginger, until onion is soft.
To the frying vegetables add 200g of finely sliced red capsicum, and 500g of finely sliced cabbage.
When these are soft, add the pork, 2 tablespoons of pickled ginger, the noodles and a sauce composed of 1 tablespoon of sugar, a quarter cup of mirin (or sherry), 2 tablespoons of sake, and quarter cup of Japanese soy sauce.
After lunch we were driven to the house of Toshiharu's parents. It is in the countryside, south of Kanoya, at a location near Higashi Kushira.
We turned off the road and came into a farmyard. There was a farmhouse and farm buildings. Best of all was a 1980s model sedan car on blocks, with a tarpaulin stretched over it. This was the dogs' house. A number of dogs sat in the car, looking as alert and important as only dogs can look when watching strangers near their domain.
We met Toshiharu's father, Satoro (83 years) and mother, Suzumi (73 years).
Toshiharu's sister, Itsuko, produced afternoon tea. She lives in another house on the same farm.
Everyone sat down for the refreshments. There was tea, beer or orange juice; curried chicken pieces, pickled choko; and little cakes of chestnut with white bean filling, also Japanese maple leaf with red bean paste. Itsuko loves cooking; later, when we were leaving, she sent several packages of food for tonight's tea: soon she will open a small izakaya near the farm. She has a 17 year old son, a notable because he weighs 100 kilograms, but we didn't see him.
Satoro made a short speech in Japanese. This was translated for us as him asking if Australia was anywhere New Guinea; he had been there and also to Bougainville and to Guadalcanal.
We replied that these battlegrounds are remembered in Australia, and we were glad he had survived the war to return to Japan to produce a family. Possibly rather mealy-mouthed, but sincere and the best we could do on the spot.
We were the first foreigners Toshiharu's parents had ever seen. They said we would be famous as no foreigners have ever before come to the village of Higashi Kushira. It is a remote village.
The crops in the fields looked to be flourishing. Earlier in the year, Ritsuko's family had sent us a gift of rice from these very fields. It was the most delicious rice.
Back at Ueno Cho, Toshiharu entertained us in the "sunakku baa" with drinks of beer and nibbles (if that word will do) of small whole squid in some tasty sauce. This snack bar was built from the packing case that once enclosed an elegant red Citroen 2 CV that Toshiharu had brought from Osaka. Toshiharu singly, and later in duet with Shouko, who returned from her work about 8 pm, sang songs Karaoke style: the snack bar was fitted with a microphone, a sound amplification system, and possessed numerous audio tapes: many were of the mournful, hauntingly beautiful, early post-war folk songs of the genre called "Enka". Colin and I responded with a rendition of "Once A Jolly Swagman" and danced to our hosts' singing to a recorded accompaniment. Much of this is recorded on photographs.
Tea was the feast supplied by Toshiharu's sister, Itsuko. There were salads, soba meshi (a mixture of rice, soba noodles, meat and seasonings), choko pickles, and what I assumed were chicken hearts.
"All squeamishness is now abandoned!"
Tonight is the coolest since we arrived in Kanoya.