This article is about the experience of Ms Fukushima, a fourth-year university student who did a homestay for about a week in Hitachiota, Ibaraki Prefecture, in February 2022!
This time, Ms Fukushima himself wrote the article about his experience!
Profile of Ms Fukushima
Age: In her 20s
Hometown: Tokyo
Occupation: 4th year university student
Period of stay: 1 week
About the host family: Hitachiota City, Ibaraki Prefecture
Staying place introduction HP: https://familyinn.jp/en/hosts/kominka300nenn/
Why did you use FAMILYINN?
My mother used to tell me from an early age that I should marry into the farming family. The reason was very simple: she thought that salopettes (farm clothes) would suit me.
When I was in my fourth year of university, I couldn’t go abroad because of COVID19 and I thought I could spend all my time in Tokyo, but then I met FAMILYINN. I wanted to experience it like my mother had told me, like marrying into a farm family.
It was something I came up with just before I left, so I think I was pretty flabbergasted, but they were very accommodating and helped me out.
I stayed for eight days with a farmer who grows beans and runs a poultry farm in Satomi Town, Ibaraki Prefecture.
I had the impression that a day flew by.
I had an image of the countryside as a place where time passed leisurely, but it was completely different.
I woke up early in the morning, took the goats to the field, cleaned them, ate breakfast, went to the chicken coop, cut down the trees to make firewood, cooked and ate lunch, rested a little and then prepared tea for the afternoon visitors. I sort the beans, take the goats back to the house, go to the chicken coop to prepare dinner, and after eating, I study. After a tiring sleep, it’s time for the next day.
Time flies by so fast.
However, even though time passes quickly, I felt that time felt different in the city.
In the city, I feel like I am always rushed by schedules and other people. There is always something in front of me that I have to process, and you are surrounded by deadlines, information and people. I feel like I am living while processing them in turn. Living in the countryside is driven by the seasons, the sun and my own desires, but I am sure those are things I have to do.
‘It’s raining today, let’s sort the beans’, ‘I need to get the goats back before the sun goes down and it gets dark’, ‘I’m hungry, let’s cook dinner’.
There are so many things we have to do to survive, and we have to decide what we are going to do every day and move on.
It is difficult to verbalise, but I always feel that even when I walk, for example, in the city I feel as if something invisible is making me walk, whereas in the countryside I feel as if I walk with my own will.
In the same way, in the countryside I feel like I am living at my own will.
There are probably factors other than location, such as overcrowded schedules, but I realised how different the amount of information around me can make me feel stretched in such different ways.
I like both ways of life and am glad to have experienced both!
Lots of tea time.
This was the biggest shock to me during my time in the countryside.
One day we were all having lunch together in the kotatsu when a small agricultural truck pulled into our property.
I looked to see who was coming and saw a tofu maker.
He put some thick fried tofu in a plastic bag and brought it to us.
‘Well, I think I’ll have a cup of tea.’
he said to himself and came up to our room as if it was a matter of course.
Oh my God! I was very surprised.
Is there really such a thing as I heard about in an old story? I couldn’t stop being surprised.
I don’t often visit friends’ houses without an appointment, and I’ve never said, “Well, let’s have a cup of tea” at someone’s house.
I was constantly impressed by how nice it was.
There are many guests, not only tofu makers, who come to the house with many souvenirs, and they come to drink tea on their own terms.
Thanks to these visitors, the house is always overflowing with a huge amount of vegetables and food, so much so that we cannot keep up with their consumption.
I was also invited to tea by the neighbours on both sides of the house.
These cultures were surprising to me because I live in the city and my usual places to communicate with people are coffee shops for lunch and pubs for dinner, where I don’t have much choice, and the culture of bringing a souvenir to tea was new to me.
I drank about two litres of tea a day all the time.
I ate so many vegetables.
I ate more vegetables than I have ever eaten in my life.
Vegetables are my main dish, vegetables are my side dish and I eat rice with vegetables every day.
I’m a bit sad to go back to a life in the city where I can’t get vegetables unless it’s a salad from a convenience store.
Message from me
I am writing this article about my experience on the bus to go home, so I feel I didn’t summarise it well. What I want to say is that I had a lot of fun.
The days were very warm, I felt more like a farmer’s daughter than a farmer’s wife.
Now, when we live in the city, I think the only time we devote to ourselves is the time we spend at home.
When we go outside, we live our lives putting others first.
It’s the same with work, and I think we live our lives with the help of someone we don’t even know, and with the
help of me. But when we live in the countryside, I feel like we are basically devoting our power to ourselves.
Just to eat one carrot, in the city you can go to the supermarket and buy it, here we make carrots.
Living is inherently a very messy, time-consuming process, and it’s just super busy.
I thought that the days when we live by borrowing and lending power to the extent that people know our faces are very human and rich.
But instead of relying on supermarkets for that one carrot, I think city life, where we use that time for the good of society, is also rich.
I thought about all these small and difficult things.
I think it’s not enough to talk about country life after just one week, I think it’s too short a period, so I want to live in different places and in different ways.
When you’re young, there’s no place you absolutely have to go back to.
Finally, I would like to conclude with many thanks to the two hosts who took care of me. Thank you very much.
About Familyinn
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There are times when you can touch a place, a person, but can’t connect deeply with them.
If it’s just a place with information on the internet, it’s not enough.
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