One For the Road

We woke up to rain yesterday in Niigata, so I was thankful for the heated, windshield wiper-equipped, enclosed cab of the tractor. We finished work without incident by 12, by which time it had also stopped raining for the most part and the Red Sox had beaten the Twins (sorry Izzy). I'd gained confidence with the tractor enough to turn around and snap a few pictures out the back window mid-till. When you're creeping along at 3 mph you can afford to do such things.



Given the slow pace of things, and the limited entertainment value of watching frogs frantically leap out the way of the tractor, during my many hours at the wheel over the weekend my attention inevitably turned inward, and I did a whole lot of thinking about a whole lot of things, not the least of which was how, exactly, I have found myself tilling rice fields in rural Japan.

And then, naturally, I turned over the idea numerous times of whether this is something I could do full time. If you don't know, it is a fully realizable option for Chieko and I to take over the family farm, since nobody else has stepped up thus far. And there are many, many attractive aspects to the notion. The location, for one, is drop dead beautiful. It is PEACEFUL, and majestic, and oh so Japan. The people are real, salt of the earth type, community. Great place to raise a family, all that. It would certainly be one route to the unique life I'm trying to live. In fact, the benefits of taking over the farm far outweigh the negatives, in number at least.

But there is one undeniable negative that I've yet to reconcile. The idea of spending a good amount of the rest of my life in Japan is something that I'm not only willing to accept, but something that I actually look forward to. That said, there is a huge, mammoth, gaping chasm between 'a good amount of my life' and 'my entire life.' And that 'entire life' bit, that's the negative that comes with the farm. And as we stand, there's no bridge across that chasm just yet. So, the idea is there, germinating in the back of my brain along with all the other seeds of 'future' that I'm gathering. We're here for at least another 4 or 5 years, and all sorts of unforeseen things happen in that kind of time, good and bad. So I'm not ruling out becoming a Japanese farmer any more than I'm ruling in or out any other possible future scenario for what the hell I'll do with myself, my wife (and most likely kids by that point) once the gig is up here in Kanazawa. But damn, Niigata is a nice place.

The funny thing, sort of, was how much time I spent sitting on my butt this weekend. We drove up to Niigata right after work on Friday. I spent the entire next day in the tractor. Of course, there's no furniture in the Iguchi house, so I was on my ass there as well. Then up bright and early for another couple of hours of tilling, and back into the car for the drive home. I bolted to the gym before closing time when we got back and jumped on the elliptical machine for about an hour just to get my legs moving.

And now we're right back into it with work. So this weekend didn't really happen for us, but that's OK. We're giving tests most of the week which is pretty low key, aside from all the correcting. At least we get a bit of a breather in terms of lesson planning. I had aimed to get some work done at home tonight but alas, the guitar needed strumming and my stomach need filling, and so here we sit, going on midnight, and a pile of work for the morning. Fortunately I don't have class until 2:30 tomorrow, but I'll be busy in the runup. I should be nice and burnt out for my Japanese lesson around 5:30 tomorrow evening.

Just before we left Niigata yesterday, Chieko's mom took us across the street to the makeshift greenhouses where they are growing the rice for this year. It was nice and green in there. They'll plant it in about 10 days.

By the way, despite the rice-heavy focus on this blog, operations have resumed over at the Rice Blog as well. Enjoy!! Good night!!