The Chronicles of Nara: Chapter Two - The Tambo

I was riding on a train with yuki, who I had just met five minutes before on our way to a city that I am still not sure of the name of. yuki was the funniest Japanese person I have met. he carried around with him a doll of a snowman, telling people it was his friend, and pointing to everyone that, near the crotch of the snowman, there was a stain where the snowman had peed his pants.

we got along great

bob and mayumi told me that there were a group of people that meet together occasionally for the purposes of planting rice the old fashioned way. I had never done this type of thing myself, but had heard about people doing it before and seen it plenty of times during my stay here.

so why not go out and try it.

bottom line is that planting rice the old fashioned way sucks

there are fields covered in mud, knee deep, that you wade it laying out huge rolls of this construction paper, which you pole holes in and lay down these small rice shoots into. hundreds and hundreds of times. there were bugs everywhere, it was hot, and many of the people I was working with were crazy.

this guy here was one of the wild fellows. there was a wild snake just slithering around doing his own thing, and this kid walks over and picks it up and starts playing with it. he sat there working with the snake for about five minutes before he found a lizard and started playing with that instead.

the night before was fun though. me and yuki rode the train to the city and were picked up by the guy in charge of the whole deal. he drove us to the rice field where me met some of the workers there and introduced ourselves. they had already finished for the day and were preparing to go up into a lodge in the mountains and hang out until work the next day.

before we went though, the whole group of us when out to fields where we watched fireflies for about an hour. it was a great experience to be there with them enjoying fireflies over rice fields under a full moon. it reminded me of the movie i had seen just a couple nights before, the grave of the fireflies, which may be one of the best movies i have ever seen.

then we were on to the lodge.

I was glad I had my guitar, cause it made the party much more fun. it was a big giant sleepover with plenty of cool guys and cute girls. I taught them my favorite game, big booty, which I often used at the girls home where I worked before I came to japan, and the Japanese folks seemed to like the game. we sat around eating rice and all types of goodies before we all went to bed sometime around 3am. I was the only foreigner there.

the next day these freakin crazy Asians have me waking up at 7am ready to go out and work in the rice fields. I wasn’t ready after only sleeping for our hours, but because I wasn’t ready to fight, I gave in peacefully and we all went to the field where we worked for about eight hours.

trying to plant rice seeds in two feet of solid mud was one of the dirtiest and most painful jobs I have ever done, but at least I can tell people now that I have actually planted rice in japan.

during the day, I thought about something that my first mission companion told me when I lived with him in a city called yamato.

I was complaining to him about how much I hated the rain while we were doing a study session together, and then he looked at me and said

“but elder riggs, I love the rain, it is what makes the rice grow”

and that has always stuck with me. these muddy rice fields that become flooded during the rainy season are what feeds a nation, and the people of this country are so grateful for the blessings that nature provides for them.

after working for those hours, I was hungry, and incredibly burned by the sun.

all the folks went to a bath house from that point, I didn’t mention this yet, but I went to the same one before we went up into the cabin in the mountains. so, it was my second time going to this bath house.

and let me just reiterate to everyone out there, I love Japanese bath houses. there is one half of the place for women and one for men, and you all get in there, totally naked, and have a party like youre in a big giant naked waterpark, with only dudes of course, unless youre a lady, then you go with all your girl friends to the other side of the bath house, which has girl things like cosmopolitan magazine and mascara I guess. I have never been to the girls side myself, and could never imagine a woman not fully clothed, so I will only assume that those types of things happen there.

my friend yuki was hanging out with me in the bath and he told me that I needed to jump into the tub next to us, so without thinking, I did. after that I freaked out. the tub I was in was sending out pulses of electricity, which I guess some people like, but I was not up for it, so I jumped out of the electric bath screaming like a naked chubby American mad man.

the next shock was even greater. the attendant that works at the bath house has a clear view of both sides of the locker rooms, and because there are only two genders of homo-sapiens, that means that at any given time, a dude can see all the naked chicks or a chick can see all the naked guys…if they want to.

I had just figured based on the night before that only a male worked at this one, but when I walked into the locker room in my birthday suit, there was an old woman staring at me. yeah, so I freaked out a little, but I guess after you see hundreds of naked people every day for years and years, its no big deal. and even though she was old, I know she still thought I was a stud.

so another bath house adventure, complete with rice. it was a great time and even though it was hard, im glad I did it. it was worse that the paint business with bossman ira but better than the pool business with bug eiland. which is funny because the guy that worked as the boss reminded me of a Japanese bug eiland. his personality was the exact same in my opinion, he just wasn’t as generous as bug. when we were in the locker room of the bath house, he stood in the corner for five minutes blow-drying his hair while standing totally naked next to a picture of a woman modeling by mount fuji.


if bug eiland had been born a Japanese man with no reservations of going to a bath house, I could see him doing something like that.

he was my hero.