Kobe!

Yesterday I arrived in Kobe to be pleasantly surprised. The trains were fine, (MIRACLE) and when Ayako picked me up, it was just a 3 minute drive to the house. This is more like a 'farm' I would say. They have small plots that get rented out to gardeners and then the others we take care of. When I arrived she showed me my room and invited me to Harry Potter, but I declined since I'd already seen it. I get to sleep in the air conditioning! Which I will never take for granted again (a hard lesson to learn in Nara) after waking up so many nights just sweating with nothing you can do to change it. And the room is my own bed, with more than 4 feet of room until the door above a very deep staircase. YAY! 

I almost cried I was so happy. Then we had a nice dinner with beef and chicken (not the famous Kobe Beef, but I have eaten beef IN Kobe now!?) Then I got to brag about Minnesota to the family a little bit, since no other Wwoofers have been from there. : ) 

Today though I had a nice breakfast with the mom, Miriko, who runs the farm's shop and gardens. She's an energetic lady and fun to talk to. Also, her English is pretty decent so we talk a mixture of "Japlish" when I don't understand. There is also the daughter, a son and his wife and two kids, and the father. It sounds like a lot of people but the house is nice and big, so really, it just feels right to have a big family here. 

After touring the mall for an hour, Miriko picked me up for lunch with her calligraphy friends. It was a very authentic Japanese restaurant with the fish in the center of the restaurant that the chefs would catch when someone ordered them! I saw a shark! But we stuck to other dishes. I ordered sushi and was glad I did so. When the other fish orders came one was still trying to breathe even though it was filleted. 

I discovered today if it has a face, I can't eat it. Not while it looks at me! But it was a lot of fun to visit with all the ladies! Tomorrow is a work day so it will be a nice new experience learning how they run things. I think of my family a lot since it looks like they could do this too, there's cute garden stuff everywhere! It's like my front yard but gone wild.