The farmer’s intern: A month in the Japanese countryside

We’ve been hopping from area to area all morning and now have a colourful array of natsu yasai (summer season greens) loaded at the back of our kei truck. It’s scorching exterior and can solely proceed to get hotter as we strategy noon, so we’re heading again to the “workplace” for a snack. The most recent batch of amazake (candy rice drink) is sitting within the fridge, awaiting our arrival.

I’m interning at Hiruzen Kougei, a shizen-saibai (pure cultivation) farm positioned within the small village of Chuka, Okayama Prefecture. Its makeshift workplace is unfold over the bottom ground of Kudo, a farmhouse-cum-restaurant the place particular occasions with visitor cooks and craftspeople are held all year long. Kudo can also be my dwelling for the following month or so. There’s a futon laid out for me on the second ground, and I’m informed I’ve free rein of the kitchen. It makes for fairly the bachelor pad. Adorning one of many counters is a “d design journey” plaque — an award given by one in every of Tokyo’s most fashionable homeware shops. It’s fairly spectacular for a spot that was renovated on a shoestring funds and had no partitions or ceiling to talk of earlier than that.