Oranges are not the only fruit

Previously I wrote a long rant about farming, small hills, and the choice Japan faces in the future between permanent reliance on other countries for food, or changing its whole countryside in the interests of food security. In short, farmers in Japan are getting older and as they do, country towns are crumbling and the environment around them is becoming moribund. Currently the Japanese countryside is a picturesque collection of terraces for rice paddies, small hills covered in forest (invariably with a shrine on top) and occasional orchards. It really is the picturesque scene from My Neighbour Totoro, if one were to add in a lot of powerlines and a few hills that have been concreted over.

This choice that the Japanese face was brought home to me in a little more detail over the new year, when in the company of the Delightful Miss E I went to visit her friend, Mrs S, in the countryside outside Beppu. We were there to spend a day making rice cakes and soaking in a private hot spring, but while there we were taken for a tour of Mrs S's rather extensive orchard holdings. Mrs S has married a Japanese policeman, and they have together built a large house on a block of land they share with his parents. She has lived in Japan for about 15 years and speaks and reads Japanese fluently, and has essentially absorbed herself entirely in Japanese family life. Family life, unfortunately, comes with an inheritance of 1000 fruit trees, mostly mikans (mandarins) but also yuzu (a type of sweet lemony fruit) and kabosu (a kind of sweet lime-y fruit). Mrs S's parents-in-law have been running this orchard their whole lives, having inherited it from their parents, but have worked full time jobs this whole time. They are now past 60 and still manage the orchards, but they obviously expect that Mrs S and her husband will take on the same task, working in the evenings and weekends to maintain the orchard while they work day jobs. Mrs S is rather doubting her commitment to this project, but has been given to believe that 1000 trees do not turn enough profit to be worked full time. Unfortunately for the good family S, Mr. S works shifts and is often away for days at a time sleeping in a police box (like Dr. Who, only better looking), and Mrs. S has a full time job at the university. So the task of managing these orchards would fall onto her shoulders, mostly, and she doesn't relish it...

So here we see the problem of Japanese agricultural policy as it affects the ordinary lives of real people. Obviously the only thing which will keep the Family S involved in this orchard at present is a highly developed sense of obligation, something which holds a lot of otherwise barely-functional systems together over here, but it doesn't seem like a model on which to base food production for 120 million people. As these farmers retire the work they have done will fall on fewer people, and those people will have to work in what is still - for all Japan's modern industrial economy - back-breakingly hard old-fashioned labour. The full extent of investment in Mrs. S's orchard consists of an electric fence and a shed, primarily because like most orchards in Japan it stretches across a couple of steep hillsides and is completely incompatible with any kind of machinery. It's not quite the state of the art serried ranks of trees one sees in the Cottees adverts...

So what is Mrs. S - and all the other people like her in Japan - to do with this unwanted obligation? Bear up under it for another 40 years and pass it down to her (even smaller) family? Or sell up and leave the hillside to a conglomerate, to industrialise it and finally turn a profit? Such an act would mean significant changes to the area around her house, I'm sure, because in its current state it is not exactly the most productive orchard on earth. The whole joy of Mrs S's house is its position nestled in a forested valley between mountains, and in every direction one sees terraced rice paddies, forest, rivers or orchards. Industrialisation would change it so that the land her husband and children grew up in changes permanently. Should they work this way every weekend to keep it, or should they give in to progress and sell it?

I'm not sure why these decisions have been delayed in Japan compared to the rest of the world, but they are going to have to be faced as the population ages and the food situation becomes more perilous. As that time fast approaches we can think of people like the good Mrs S, wrestling with a lifetime of farming, and wonder how they will manage the conflicting obligations of family past, present and future, and the land they live on...

... but in the meantime I'm going to peel myself a mikan (they really are quite delicious), and think of distant friends, to whom currently my only obligation is to update this blog, and not to forget...

Like a komori out of hell...

After 2 weeks of internet silence, I have finally got my act together enough to send you all an email, having finished all the necessities of settling into Japan - alien card, bank account, mobile phone, hot spring visit, rice cakes, sex museum visit, furniture shopping, descent into hell - so I can settle into the task of communicating with distant friends. It's 7pm here and freezing cold (tropical archipelago my arse), snow is forecast for tomorrow and all my chores are done until Sunday, when I have to hobble onto a bus to Fukuoka and the commencement of my Japanese studies. My arrival in Fukuoka corresponds with some kind of annual pub crawl (which in this weather will be like scott of the antarctic), but rather than burden you with tales of expected hangovers, I thought I might let you know about a few of the fun activities to be had in Beppu town.

Christmas Eve Fireworks Fantasia: The perfect combination of Japanese cute, Japanese weird and pointless western ceremony, christmas eve in Japan is like valentine's day in the west, and young couples go dating. in Beppu this has been turned into a fireworks festival, with traditional festival stalls selling overpriced greasy food, bands and then a big fireworks display. The bands were, in order: a group of children in santa outfits doing a dance; a heavy metal band ("visual" style), with a male and female singer singing passionately about various dark topics; a young female soulful singer-songwriter giving everyone a gentle and warm feeling; and a hip-hop band. All proceeded on the same stage within 10 minutes of one another, did a 30-40 minute set, and were introduced by a screamingly happy female MC. This dizzying combination of genres meant that the crowd was stuffed full of couples from every mix of sub-cultures on the peninsula... very strange. But the combination gets wierder, because after the bands finished the "fireworks fantasia" started. This consisted of fireworks set to a medley of really cheesy 80s romance songs, all narrated by a really cheesy narrator. We could tell he was cheesy because when the foreign music sets came on, he introduced them in English in a really cheerfully tacky American accent. Yay. I had been in Japan for 1 day when I was subjected to this several hour-long concatenation of craziness, and right down to the love-heart shaped firework explosions, it was comfortingly Japanese and completely disorienting.

Mochi making: traditionally in Japan at new year one eats o-mochi, rice cakes, and on the 31st December Emma and I went to her friend Sarah's house to make rice cakes. Sarah has lived in Japan since 1994, and is married to a Japanese Policeman, and is essentially immersed in rural life. She stands to inherit a massive orange farm, which is an interesting quandary about which I will say more in separate emails for those of you who are interested...

Onsen (hot spring) visits: I have been now to 2 onsens, one an open air onsen in the garden of hotel, in which I boiled my brain, and one in a rather exciting Kyushu specialty, the "family onsen" (i.e., love onsen), which is a private hot spring which you can book in advance for a one hour period. The onsen I visited had an inside and an outside bath, the outside bath overlooking hillsides and shadowed by a tree for privacy. I went with a family (who were, fortunately, in a different private room with their 3 rowdy children), and they recommended I experience this onsen with the aid of beer. It's a good idea, provided the water isn't so hot that it boils you while you drink - but fortunately this hot spring was perfect.

The sex museum: I went there today, just before I went into hell. This place contains a wax work of snow white having sex with the 7 dwarves (please press the big breast to see the dwarves move) while prince charming looks on in shock from a window; wax life-size replicas of animal genitals (including a whale's girly bits!) with pictures of some of the animals in action (my god giraffes are scary); a little cinema playing really hammy 80s Japanese police porn; wax replicas of jane fonda and some other western actress; and upstairs a long series of exhibits of early 20th century Japanese pornographic prints. All of these prints were under perspex covers which had carefully pixelated dots over the juicy parts of the picture, just like in a Japanese porno. How pointless! But the staff had conveniently knocked the prints so that the dirty bits were in many cases just slightly to the right or left of the key sections... also the front counter, which was staffed by a dour middle-aged lady, was selling a variety of quite inventive sex tools. Woohoo!

My descent into hell: the sex museum is rather appropriatley situated on "Demon Mountain", which hosts the 8 Beppu "hells", hot springs too hot for humans to bear, in various lurid colours, which have been turned into tourist sites and can be viewed for a small fee. We went into "Demon mountain white lake hell", which has a hot spring at 99.1 C, a lot of steam, and cages full of crocodiles. Go figure. I have no sympathy for crocodiles, steaming them alive seems too good for them, but I get the creeps whenever I'm in the same area as they are. I wonder if one can buy crocodile meat in Beppu? Apparently historically people were chucked into these hells by samurai as a form of torture, but I'm not sure I believe this tale. Samurai were noble and honourable, right? I think this hell is called the white lake hell because of the steam; it wasn't very white. Apparently the steam produces enough power to drag a single carriage, but for some reason noone in beppu has ever worked out how (or tried?) to harness the steam or the heat for power. I suppose selling overpriced tickets to Korean tourists is a more efficient use for them...

My other impressions of Beppu are that, besides being steamy and cold and smelly, it is a little backward compared to the previous country town I lived in. it's very pretty, being a narrow town pressed between steep mountains and the sea, and it has a typical mix of interesting bars and nightlife (I've already been on a tavern crawl on new years' eve, during which I was groped by a massively drunk overweight Japanese girl from her position sprawled on the floor by the door, and Emma was forcefed champagne by a self-styled hoodlum). People here are of course friendly and cheerful, and it seems like possibly a very nice place to spend a few years of my time. But it's early days yet, and I don't know yet what is going to come crawling out of those hells to get me...