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So this is the place I currently call home-a 240 year old japanese farm house deep in the Aso mountains where guests are fed gourmet meals, rice and soy are grown, animals are raised, worshipped and eaten, and pets are made of injured wild beasts. Mushrooms and mountain vegetables are foraged for and mochi, miso and tofu are made the old fashioned way by people that are masters at their crafts. Westerners are barely ever seen here, unless like me they’re drawn by the call of the old, the real, the wild. If it wasn’t for my current volunteering mission, I would have never found this place....and my life would have been less rich for it. I’m a new volunteer here and as a single woman, the only woman, I’m given to Reiko-san by her husband Kazuhiro-san, for in his eyes what use could I possibly be?! But Reiko-san and I know better. We collect eggs, wash buckets and pots and bags and dishes, I set the table and sweep up Sakura blossom. I bag up compost and dig with the ear wigs hoping they don't run up my trouser legs. I dry shiitake in the sun, and hunt for bamboo, and boil it up in a massive heirloom cauldron the way her mother, and her mother’s mother showed her to. I carry out the dead chickens and cut grass for the goat, and follow Reiko-San around the kitchen and mountain-side like an apprentice as she points out flavours and smells and buds and flowers and nearly crashes her car doing so. It brings a simple truth to my reality; it is a different world for women in Japan. Women here give up everything when they marry, becoming housewives. But it does explain one huge thing to me about japanese language; "oishii", is used so often here it starts to sound disingenuous, comedic...but i realise now it's purpose. For a woman who has spent all day preparing dish after dish, telling her her work is "delicious" is the hugest validation. And I understand by extension how entertaining is so important; it is her chance to shine. And she always does! A simple word becomes a gift in itself. And for a country obsessed with uniform the apron is hers, and she wears it with pride. So, being here, to suffer a "woman's role" for a while...maybe it's good for me! To bear witness to the quiet strength of these women; their silence and meekness erroneously perceived as weakness when in fact they bear their cultural burden with a grace that could never be mine; the understated pillars of japanese families! And so I watch and learn in a kind of awe... My eyes water when the ancient smoker smokes. We eat, we drink, we onsen and we worship the onsen gods, for what fine gods they are. We are always going somewhere, and I never know where; we communicate in J-English, in google translate and in beeps from the washing machine. We hunt the rescued rabbit that escaped for the second time and who clearly has other ideas about being the new family pet, and coo over the baby goat, born into an unpromising future only the night before. And when i ask about the drain koi, I'm told we eat them. I love Reiko-san's sweet red beans and infectious laughter and the way she has uses for every leaf and flower, and Kazuhiro-san's konnyaku, and sherbet deserts that are surely too sweet to be made by such a cranky little fellow. It tickles me that he loves sweet red beans too, and that Reiko-San leaves them for him as he sleeps under the kortatsu. I fall asleep on my tatami Mat to the sounds of drainage ditch frogs and wake to the cockerels and wonder if it's any different above the goat shed, where the boys live. I love that spring has come to the mountains and that the air is warm and the sun is on my face as I finish whatever task Reiko-san sets me to. There is peace here, as the simplicity of life carrying on regardless washes over you. I wonder if Kazuhiro-san feels it!