Today is a national holiday in Japan -called Taiku-no-hi (Exercise Day? Sports Day?) And again last weekend I found myself staying over at Adeline's place. (I swear I should've just rented out an apartment near there instead). Her mom just plopped over here for a 10-day visit too. And somehow on Sunday... I found myself in Nara with Adeline+mom, Ruo Lin, Yun Jung, Chris, Pei, Casey (sp?) and Kaja (sp?) (mostly the UA students of this year). Not only did I find myself in Nara, I found myself in Nara harvesting padi. (The land owners is the family of one of the UA class' teacher.)
Seriously, all the students put on mid-leg high boots, walked over the little fields, took a hand-sickle each and basically ripped all the stalks of padi available to us in sight. We didn't exactly walk through the process even, I mean considering the grounds were so soft, I imagine that it might be exactly like what quicksand feels like... haha We sloshed and sank and sloshed and sank some more.
So there I was, almost two-thirds way my patch of padi when I realised I couldn't pull up my feet anymore. I was completely stuck. So what I tried to do was, after putting down my sickle on the side 'bank', I leaned over to the dry part and pulled like my life depended on it. Still my boots wouldn't budge. Then these two ladies (who were actually workers maybe) who saw me struggling came and tried to help me out. Alas, only one boot came out. And so there we were, the three of us pulling really really hard when - ...only my other foot got lose. x_X The other boot was just there... I swear it even sunk in a little more. Then one of the ladies went to pull out the boot. Oh she pulled it out alright - but then what happened... she got stuck. Luckily we managed to pull her (and her boots) out. (Of course that's not the end of it, when I finally managed to get my guts back out and stepped back into the muddy mess, I nearly fell in surprise as a frog jumped out of nowhere, which got me deeper in the mud... which got me stuck again... ... ... What a day.
Everybody went through this sinking in the mud episode... and that would have been the worst part of this adventure if it hadn't been for these things that had been jumping about and appearing out of nowhere. These things meaning... spiders... frogs... crickets... centipedes... praying mantis... grasshoppers... you name it, it was there. I mean, for me, it's not so bad seeing these insects if I could run away immediately... but as you might defer from the boot-stuck-in-mud episode... all we could do was stay still and scream our heads off as the spiders crawled around us... the frogs jump around us... and... and... OMG It took so much patience to try and stay still while these things would go out of our paths since running away was not an option. In fact, attempting to run meant sinking even deeper... so... well... Seriously, what a day. My left wrist cramped up right at the end too. =_=
I woke up today and I was aching positively everywhere. (But more like oh-hey-I-did-something-good-yesterday-thus-the-ache kind of good ache ^_^) I still can't believe I went harvesting!
What a weekend. As always... interesting things always happen when I go visit Gaidai.
No comments:
Post a Comment