Day 46: A Day of Weeding

Today was all weeding. It was a bright day and it didn't seem like it would rain. I spent the first hour helping out around the house while Celso did some carpentry with Sayaka-san’s dad. 

In the field, I spent the first one and a half hour using the weeding machine to cut grass around the rice paddy. The weeding machine is very sharp and sends things flying all over the place. When I do it, I seem to get dirt all over myself. But when Celso does it, he doesn’t seem to. Maybe I wasn't using it perfectly right. Also, the machine only cuts the weeds from the top, and not from the roots. So I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right. But Sayaka-san told me later that it’s okay.  I learnt that grass is a kind of weed too.

I spent another half an hour walking inside the rice paddy looking for weeds with red roots. Those are apparently really dangerous. This rice paddy wasn't as neatly planted as the last one and it was harder to walk around in it. There weren’t very clear rows and columns and when there were some, they were too thin to comfortably walk in. The good news was that I was wearing socks, so my feet didn’t hurt too much from the stone, and since it hadn’t rained the mud wasn’t as soft and wet as last time. 

We did some more weeding in the afternoon. I spent about an hour and a half weeding with the machine in another field this time.

For dinner, we ate okonomiyaki. Sayaka-san taught me how to cook okonomiyaki on the pan. All that needs to be done is to put the mixture of vegetables, meat and flour on the pan and wait for it to solidify. It is flipped every now and then and takes about 10-15 minutes on the pan. It was delicious and tasted different from the one I'd had before. 

Okonomiyaki (savory Japanese pancakes) for dinner

Some high school students from nearby visited and we introduced ourselves to each other. They spoke broken English. They just hung around the house for a bit playing with fire crackers.Although I couldn't understand what they were saying to each other, the tone of the conversation seemed similar to what I imagined my own to be when I was their age (around 15 or 16). 

I feel a lot healthier and fit, and I'm eating significantly more than usual.