surprise excursion
Wednesday after my last class got out I returned to the staff room at Seibu Elementary where I usually join the other teachers for afternoon 'otsukaresama' coffee and snack made personally by the school's lunch lady, often taken from her own backyard. This time however, I was approached by the head teacher who asked if I'd like to join them on a "short trip" into the mountains. She gave me a lengthy explanation of some annual excursion the staff go on to "nani-nani-natural-water-something-mountain-school-pool"... I like hiking, and they said it'd only take 30 minutes so I agreed "hai, ikimasu" to which they were all very excited about.
Nakamura san then led me into an unknown room which I had previously assumed to be a closet, but was in fact a whole tatami room complete with closet, TV and a really nice western bathroom. She said it was her private changing room for when makes lunch (?). She hands me a really old, dirty shirt and pants about 6 inches too short for me and tells me to change. Thinking I couldn't look more ridiculous, she then puts a towel on my head and an old lady straw hat on top of it, "for the bugs." I was then pushed outside where they sprayed me down in mosquito repellent and was handed pink galoshes to complete the ensemble. They assured me it was all necessary for where we'd be going... which I still had no idea.
The 9 of us (all wearing equally mismatched ridiculous outfits) then piled into Kyoto Sensei's Toyota. Seibu Elementary is already pretty far up into the mountains, but then we continued driving further into the valley on a gravel road for 5 min till we got to the top of a steep hill that led down into a rice paddy-filled valley. Each teacher was handed a sythe (sweet) and bucket before climbing down and across the rice paddy valley and into the woods. The muggy air and vegetation reminded me of the temperate rainforests in the NW by Puget Sound, except everything was unidentifiable including the crazy insects. As we got further into the woods the teachers started shouting "yohooo, yohooo we're not delicious! don't come over here!" ...apparently the local bears have recently come out of hibernation.
Ten minutes later we reached our destination- a small hilly clearing with a muddy stream running through it and a well covered by an aluminum canopy. To keep me occupied the office lady taught me how to identify three types of wild plants that they planned to eat for tomorrow's school lunch (for a minute I considered mentioning that last fall we poisoned ourselves by mis-identifiying nonedible weeds in our backyard, which we recently discovered in April to be Daisies...not kidding :P)
While I forraged the teachers created a mud-scooping assembly line and started clearing out the stream, except for Kyoto Sensei who disappeared down the well for 20 min. I finally figured out that what we were doing was clearing out the spring mud outta the natural mountain water source from which Seibu Elementary gets thier swimming pool water. They saw me taking pictures, and wanted me to mention to those back home that this is "not normal." Seibu is just special like that :)
An hour later we went back to the school and changed. Nakamura looked through my harvested weeds and announced that I'd done a "good job" :D Nakamura showed me how to cook each plant and gave me a bag to take home along with a fake tangerine keychain souvenir from her trip to Gifu. We celebrated a successful excursion with otsukaresama coffee and home-baked blueberry bread.
Nakamura san then led me into an unknown room which I had previously assumed to be a closet, but was in fact a whole tatami room complete with closet, TV and a really nice western bathroom. She said it was her private changing room for when makes lunch (?). She hands me a really old, dirty shirt and pants about 6 inches too short for me and tells me to change. Thinking I couldn't look more ridiculous, she then puts a towel on my head and an old lady straw hat on top of it, "for the bugs." I was then pushed outside where they sprayed me down in mosquito repellent and was handed pink galoshes to complete the ensemble. They assured me it was all necessary for where we'd be going... which I still had no idea.
The 9 of us (all wearing equally mismatched ridiculous outfits) then piled into Kyoto Sensei's Toyota. Seibu Elementary is already pretty far up into the mountains, but then we continued driving further into the valley on a gravel road for 5 min till we got to the top of a steep hill that led down into a rice paddy-filled valley. Each teacher was handed a sythe (sweet) and bucket before climbing down and across the rice paddy valley and into the woods. The muggy air and vegetation reminded me of the temperate rainforests in the NW by Puget Sound, except everything was unidentifiable including the crazy insects. As we got further into the woods the teachers started shouting "yohooo, yohooo we're not delicious! don't come over here!" ...apparently the local bears have recently come out of hibernation.
Ten minutes later we reached our destination- a small hilly clearing with a muddy stream running through it and a well covered by an aluminum canopy. To keep me occupied the office lady taught me how to identify three types of wild plants that they planned to eat for tomorrow's school lunch (for a minute I considered mentioning that last fall we poisoned ourselves by mis-identifiying nonedible weeds in our backyard, which we recently discovered in April to be Daisies...not kidding :P)
While I forraged the teachers created a mud-scooping assembly line and started clearing out the stream, except for Kyoto Sensei who disappeared down the well for 20 min. I finally figured out that what we were doing was clearing out the spring mud outta the natural mountain water source from which Seibu Elementary gets thier swimming pool water. They saw me taking pictures, and wanted me to mention to those back home that this is "not normal." Seibu is just special like that :)
An hour later we went back to the school and changed. Nakamura looked through my harvested weeds and announced that I'd done a "good job" :D Nakamura showed me how to cook each plant and gave me a bag to take home along with a fake tangerine keychain souvenir from her trip to Gifu. We celebrated a successful excursion with otsukaresama coffee and home-baked blueberry bread.
Comments
how does the well/spring water get to the school's swimming pool?
-Bill