I had a very busy weekend! On Saturday I went to the Senmaida light up in Wajima. Senmaida is a field of rice paddies that is situated right on the coast. The name "Senmaida" is translated as field of a thousand rice paddies. It is not quite a thousand, but it is very beautiful especially during the light up. Once a year hundreds of volunteers organize to place candles along the pathways and create a beautiful scene. I drove out there with my friend from Judo and her kids and we walked through the fields and enjoyed the beautiful sight that it was. It was also her first time to go see the light up.

 

After we headed back home I drove to Nanao to meet several other ALTs to go do karaoke. We arrived at the karaoke place at 10:30 and sang until 2:00 am! And we only left because they were closing, otherwise we would have been happy to sing longer. It was a great karaoke night, everyone sang every song and we danced around in our karaoke box and had a blast.

On Sunday morning I went sweet potato picking with my Judo group. Several of the school clubs (Judo, baseball, volleyball, etc) sent groups of people to do the sweet potato harvest. Apparently the event is held for social exchange/relations. About 12-15 people from Judo were there, but total I think 100-125 people showed up to help with the harvest. We were supervised by 6 farmers who gave the opening and closing comments for the day and gave us our instructions for picking the potatoes. It only took about an hour to retrieve all the potatoes from the dirt, and then we put them all in a huge pile. We were told to fill bags take as many as we could possibly want, and then some to give to friends. So everyone dug in to select their potatoes of choice. I wondered what would happen to the rest of the potatoes that people did not take, and was told that they were going to be sent to disaster relief areas, or used as pig feed. I was surprised, since it was such a huge crop of good potatoes they could easily sell them to a grocery store. But I believe it is a community garden or co-op so maybe they just raise the potatoes for the benefit of the community.