On a Saturday afternoon
Yesterday, Bill (the other language teacher in Tokigawa) and I took off on our new bikes (purchased for us by our contracting organization, the Board of Education for Tokigawa on Thursday, much to our surprise, since we already had a bike that our predecessor left us) to find an organic cafe we were told about by the people who work in the woodworking shop we walk past almost everyday. The people from the woodworking shop had apparently already told the woman who owns the organic cafe that we would probably be stopping by sometime, so she wasn't completely surprised to see us there. Small town, no doubt! The stop into the organic cafe, called "Poponoki" (I don't know what 'popo' means- some kind of fruit, but 'noki' means tree) was just meant to be a quick drop-in to check it out, say hi to the owner whom we were told spoke English well, maybe buy some staples, and head out to complete other errands. We ended up staying somewhere between 3-4 hours.
For lack of better wording, our experience at Poponoki was absolutely fantastic- one of those experiences you always hope to fall into whenever you're traveling. It was of course all the more meaningful for us since we will be living in the community for at least a year. First off, the woman who runs the shop, Miyoumi, was more than happy to chat with us, and she is a very interesting person. She spent three years in Austria as part of her undergraduate education (so she speaks German too, which I'm going to have to brush up on myself apparently!). She had worked for an undetermined amount of time in Tokyo as an economic Journalist, again, doing a lot of work with German-speaking journalists, translation, etc. And now she and her husband work an organic farm, running the cafe every week from Thursday-Sunday (but they do not actively promote for their cafe- they have regulars they enjoy serving, and simply rely on word-of-mouth for any new patrons). They seem to be pretty involved in activism issues, especially related to third-world countries and peace promotion. Miyoumi was talking about some of the more "interesting guests" she has come to her cafe and mentioned a man who was coming that same day at 2pm to do a demonstration on cotton weaving. We of course ended up being there at 2pm and got involved with the demonstration, but I'll talk about that in a minute.
In the meantime, Miyoumi broke out a couple of Jew's Harps she owns to show us the difference between a Japanese Jew's Harp and a Siberian Jew's Harp, even playing them a bit. She is apparently an avid Jew's Harp player, and has brought in Jew's Harp masters from other parts of Japan and Siberia to play in a concert at one of the local Buddist Temples. She also enjoys music boxes, which her husband now makes (!). She took out one of the music boxes and played music for us for a good 20 minutes, which is even more noteworthy because the music boxes are manual, and she had to crank paper music sheets through the mechanism in order to play the music. The box she was playing was a basic, small, wood box cut, but when her husband came in, she had him break out the first music box he made...out of a bamboo stalk. To top it off, they read us a poem he wrote about hearing a lullaby in the woods when collecting leaves in the mountains to use as compost in their gardens, and then Miyoumi played the poem, as had been composed by a friend of theirs, on the bamboo music box while singing along. Fantasitc
While Miyoumi was playing the music boxes for us, an older couple came into the store. Towards the end of our time at Poponoki, we were told that the family name of this older couple was pronounced "Mama," so they are called Mama and Papa, which I thought was so fitting, considering it felt like they somewhat adopted us during our visit. Papa is apparently a very talented paper plane maker, but not the paper planes we made in elementary school. These are more like mini-model planes that he makes out of recycled material and a large rubberband is used to launch the planes. Naturally he had a box of his planes in his jeep, so he took us out into the garden and showed us how to launch the planes, then let us try a couple ourselves, and gave us each one as a gift. You have to see the planes in flight to get a good grasp on how well they fly, but to give you an idea of how crafty Papa is, he made a 20-cm plane that he was able to fly for 34 minutes!
At 2pm, the cotton-spinning exhibition did indeed occur. From what we understood, the man who was performing the exhibition had gone to India to study cotton-spinning in the method that had been used by Ghandi. There were only 8 of us there- I get the feeling that the exhibitions and lectures that Miyoumi and her husband hold at their cafe are simply to give people an outlet to share their stories and talents, and if other patrons happen to be around during the exhibitions or hear about it somehow beforehand, great, but I'm sure they do not advertise the majority of exhibitions, which made it all the more meaningful for us, that we just happened to be at the right place at the right time. The exhibition started with a showing of the briefcase-sized "machine" Ghandi used to spin cotton thread. Then we were shown all stages of the cotton thread making process through hands-on exercises, from trying to take the seeds out of a cotton "ball" fresh off the stalk (which is NOT easy), to rolling pressed cotton and making thread by hand. I have a profound new appreciation for what people went through to make thread by hand back in the day in the U.S. (any country and era really) and still do in various parts of the world today.
We probably would have stayed on into the evening as well had we not had a prior engagement with our neighbors to prepare for. We begged our leave, which was granted, but not before Miyoumi had us congregate together around a large table for Swiss tea, freshly sliced peaches and cocoa-covered beans (very tasty).
For lack of better wording, our experience at Poponoki was absolutely fantastic- one of those experiences you always hope to fall into whenever you're traveling. It was of course all the more meaningful for us since we will be living in the community for at least a year. First off, the woman who runs the shop, Miyoumi, was more than happy to chat with us, and she is a very interesting person. She spent three years in Austria as part of her undergraduate education (so she speaks German too, which I'm going to have to brush up on myself apparently!). She had worked for an undetermined amount of time in Tokyo as an economic Journalist, again, doing a lot of work with German-speaking journalists, translation, etc. And now she and her husband work an organic farm, running the cafe every week from Thursday-Sunday (but they do not actively promote for their cafe- they have regulars they enjoy serving, and simply rely on word-of-mouth for any new patrons). They seem to be pretty involved in activism issues, especially related to third-world countries and peace promotion. Miyoumi was talking about some of the more "interesting guests" she has come to her cafe and mentioned a man who was coming that same day at 2pm to do a demonstration on cotton weaving. We of course ended up being there at 2pm and got involved with the demonstration, but I'll talk about that in a minute.
In the meantime, Miyoumi broke out a couple of Jew's Harps she owns to show us the difference between a Japanese Jew's Harp and a Siberian Jew's Harp, even playing them a bit. She is apparently an avid Jew's Harp player, and has brought in Jew's Harp masters from other parts of Japan and Siberia to play in a concert at one of the local Buddist Temples. She also enjoys music boxes, which her husband now makes (!). She took out one of the music boxes and played music for us for a good 20 minutes, which is even more noteworthy because the music boxes are manual, and she had to crank paper music sheets through the mechanism in order to play the music. The box she was playing was a basic, small, wood box cut, but when her husband came in, she had him break out the first music box he made...out of a bamboo stalk. To top it off, they read us a poem he wrote about hearing a lullaby in the woods when collecting leaves in the mountains to use as compost in their gardens, and then Miyoumi played the poem, as had been composed by a friend of theirs, on the bamboo music box while singing along. Fantasitc
While Miyoumi was playing the music boxes for us, an older couple came into the store. Towards the end of our time at Poponoki, we were told that the family name of this older couple was pronounced "Mama," so they are called Mama and Papa, which I thought was so fitting, considering it felt like they somewhat adopted us during our visit. Papa is apparently a very talented paper plane maker, but not the paper planes we made in elementary school. These are more like mini-model planes that he makes out of recycled material and a large rubberband is used to launch the planes. Naturally he had a box of his planes in his jeep, so he took us out into the garden and showed us how to launch the planes, then let us try a couple ourselves, and gave us each one as a gift. You have to see the planes in flight to get a good grasp on how well they fly, but to give you an idea of how crafty Papa is, he made a 20-cm plane that he was able to fly for 34 minutes!
At 2pm, the cotton-spinning exhibition did indeed occur. From what we understood, the man who was performing the exhibition had gone to India to study cotton-spinning in the method that had been used by Ghandi. There were only 8 of us there- I get the feeling that the exhibitions and lectures that Miyoumi and her husband hold at their cafe are simply to give people an outlet to share their stories and talents, and if other patrons happen to be around during the exhibitions or hear about it somehow beforehand, great, but I'm sure they do not advertise the majority of exhibitions, which made it all the more meaningful for us, that we just happened to be at the right place at the right time. The exhibition started with a showing of the briefcase-sized "machine" Ghandi used to spin cotton thread. Then we were shown all stages of the cotton thread making process through hands-on exercises, from trying to take the seeds out of a cotton "ball" fresh off the stalk (which is NOT easy), to rolling pressed cotton and making thread by hand. I have a profound new appreciation for what people went through to make thread by hand back in the day in the U.S. (any country and era really) and still do in various parts of the world today.
We probably would have stayed on into the evening as well had we not had a prior engagement with our neighbors to prepare for. We begged our leave, which was granted, but not before Miyoumi had us congregate together around a large table for Swiss tea, freshly sliced peaches and cocoa-covered beans (very tasty).
posted by Mandy | 4:49 PM
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