Obuse

How to describe this place? We got here last Wednesday and are still being surprised. I hate to describe a town as charming, but Obuse is pretty damn charming - all narrow streets with gorgeous vegetable gardens, temples, outlying orchards (chestnuts, apples, table grapes), foothills splashed with wisteria, the furthest mountains still with snow on their peaks.
We're staying in the upstairs of Masuichi, a sake brewery that has existed for 17 generations. Our host, Sarah, is a project manager for Obuse-do, the family company that runs the brewery as well as several other businesses in town. Sarah is kind of a marvel, having been integral in bringing young people back into Obuse by creating viable jobs and renewing interest in the traditional crafts and agriculture of the area.
The farm that she and her husband own is in another village so we've been dividing our work time between ornamental gardens here in town and thinning apples up on the mountain. The other day, while doing apple work, we joined the village farmers for their annual 'fire-blight' walk. We split up into a few groups and everyone set out to walk through the orchards looking for signs of the virus. The woman that led us is close to ninety years old and started farming apples 61 years ago.
Japanese people definitely think more in terms of the group than the individual - and it is reflected beautifully in these farming villages. The orchards are individually owned and farmed, but everyone has a vested interest in how the neighbor's fields are faring. And after the work is done, it's a good excuse to gather in the village hall to drink sake and, very likely, gossip about the foreigners in town.

This is Rice.

Going from the full-on New Zealand harvest to the Japanese start-of-spring has been more of an adjustment than I thought it would be. We’re going through fruit withdrawal. Still, it’s hard to complain when there is an abundance of fish and rice and wild vegetables and tea and homemade tsukemono (vegetables pickled in a ferment-y mash of rice bran).
After two weeks of surprisingly cold weather (made colder by this farmhouse, which for all its initial charm, is not the cosiest place to live) we are finally in what feels like full-on spring. This past week everyone has been getting their rice seedlings into the fields and today we went to the other side of the village to help with a planting. It was such a gorgeous scene - 70, 80-year-old men and women bent at the waist, bodies fully covered in several thin layers of fabric, wide-brimmed straw hats, knee-high galoshes. Bright green spikes poking out of the water.
(The particular family we were helping farms at the base of a small mountain. They’ve had a monkey problem. My 7-year-old-self [and my 31-year-old self only slightly less] wishes I were so lucky).
I found myself wanting to stick around until the rice harvest, which I imagine is a major event around here. The next best thing would be to eat the rice this family grows, which we did at dinner - and, um …I’m kind of speechless about this rice, actually. Unbelievable.