30th Oct – 5th day at farm, joy ride day

Last night, I heard some really strong winds outside. I thought it must be very cold to sleep out. I needed a backup plan. Luckily I found out that it was just the machine which processed the grains that was set to run overnight.

Almost wanted to use the man-made toilet outside my room. Till today, I have yet to touch it, worrying that I would need to clean my shit later. I managed to hold on untill I was ready to meet Yuhei-san at 7:30am as usual, every morning. I saw the “Sabah Tea” and asked Yuhei-san. He said his friend had climbed the Mt Kota Kinabalu at Sabah before and brought him this.

Today was really an easy day. We started to pack some rice using the rice separator again for couple of 10kg. After that, I was basically wondering around looking Yuhei at work. He was pretty much a solo man. I was only the next WWOFF (http://www.wwoffjapan.com/) helper since September. Usually, he would do the work himself unless it was something simple or repetitive. Then, he used a cool machine to turn the brown rice into white rice. Next, we went to pick Kabosu (lemon like fruit). Kabosu trees could grow around 9 or 10 feet perhaps. Some of the fruits were hidden and tougher to cut them away. It would be more fun if I didn’t have to choose the good one to pick. In the process, I have destroyed various houses of the spiders. Sometimes I was just next to them and worried they may attack me for being an intruder. Remember?! They are huge and colourfully eerie! We spent hours there and picked up 6 big baskets!

After lunch, I went for a joy ride!! =] Yuhei-san said that we were going to the high school festival at Oita city to check out the school for Gen-san next year. It was an engineering school and it was a famous one according to Gen-san. At the school, there was some performance on the stage. Students were everywhere selling food at various stalls. High school life is great. Seeing them, I wished I were 20 years younger again, and back to high school. We visited a few showcases from the Mechanical, Civil, Robotic and Computer Engineering. There was even one course, the “Practical Environmental Engineering”, that did twinning program with Singapore Polytechnic at Year 2!! We saw a photography showcase too, and there was this Twin Tower picture, but the description was saying “at Singapore”! I corrected Yuhei-san. Perhaps, the description was meant for the picture next to it, but the pictures below were the place “Malacca” and a huge mosque.

After that, we went to a department store, called KS. Something like Best Denki. Saw a very rugged Pentax camera and very tempted to buy it, for 26800yen. Then, we reached Mie, a small town near Ogata, to check out the DVD for rent. I saw “Internet cafe” and thought “yes”, I could come here tomorrow instead of Oita city, which was an hour train ride away. Mie is just 2 train stops from Ogata. We were back home by 6pm. On the way, I could see that the clouds were covering the whole sky, but a single line. The view was pretty nice. Yuhei-san also broke his record for asking me more than 3 questions in the car. About Melbourne, what’s interesting in Singapore and Australia. I told him before that I’ve studied in Melbourne for 4 years. He did not ask about Malaysia. Btw, the GPS system in the car here are good. It worked immediately after you started the car, unlike back home, where the GPS needs some time to detect the signal.

Dinner was so delicious tonight that the children licked off the gravy from their plates! The kids got a little more comfortable with me and tried to play with me. =] Ryo-san’s volleyball team name was “Arrows”. The 3 siblings relationships were really good. Would like to play with them more, but I was shy.

Back to my room and watched a movie again. Tomorrow is a holiday for me!! =] I asked Yuhei-san how to walk to the train station and he drew me a map that almost resembled the one you bought outside.