Sunrice

Soundtrack: Chicane – “No Ordinary Morning”

The time is 06:51, we are lying on our futons placed on the tatami mats in our old style japanese room, a room hidden behind intricate passages of hallways ever changed by paper sliding doors. Someone woke us up from the depths we plunged during the night by a “good morning” and “come here” from the busy farming world happening on the other side of the paper doors. Our host and farmer is already busy, and before he leaves for the day he shows us some fresh salad and japanese radish, pulled brutally out of their slumber in the chill moist earth just a moment ago. In his mumbling japanese he tells us proudly that they are from his fields, and if we would please eat them for lunch today. Both we and the japanese radish were just pulled out of our chill dark dreams and dragged out in the light of the morning sun, the warmth from life spreads from the sky through my hair, chest, fingers, eyes, legs, through my feet and right down to the cold death of the earth and right back to life again.

After a lazy day of writing fieldwork reports, we got out for a run, let the brain get a pause and get down to the body. Well through a good warm up round, and halfway through some quick sprints, an old guy waves his hand out from a neighbor window. He wants us to get inside. And with no bitter pun intended, old japanese men seem to have no experience of not getting things their way, so by etiquette rules we were suddenly sitting in some old mans sofa, getting served refreshments by his wife, looking at wedding pictures from his grandsons wedding. Let me repeat myself: we are out exercising, and get invited in for coffee and cake. No; commanded. Only in Japan. Margaret Lock was right when she named Japan “the land of paradox”. Anyway after looking at the pictures in what we perceived to be a politely enough time to say we had to leave, discretely avoiding a big chocolate serving and sipping down some coffee we said we had to study. Sneaking around their house so they would not see we were actually going out to continue our run between the ricefields.

The sun is starting to get a kinder evening glow, and while the evening colors starts to get warmer we are back in the ricefields. Running past water and weeds, the smell of sweet chamomile and lemon balm soothing our heavy breaths. How surreal the feeling is; right there, running through ricefields in the japanese countryside. Almost as surreal as the thought of the approaching journey home.

And the fresh salad and japanese radish certainly is not forgotten, presenting the day´s lunch: japanese style omelette roll with crab, kombu (seaweed drowned in sweet soysauce), cucumber and salad fresh from the fields, tomato and radish on the side, yoghurt with blueberries and crushed almond, grapefruit and fresh coffee. Life (read: food)  in the country is good.

Thanks to my sweet travelfriend 赤, for good company, good food, and a nice ass to watch while jogging through the ricefields.