It has been a few days and now we are at our first WWOOF host and just spent the day harvesting apples! Yesterday we took the bullet train from Tokyo to Nagano (home of the 1998 winter Olympics) and ended up spending the afternoon there because we couldnt get in touch with our host. Our host Nagata was at a funeral (we learned later) and was not able to access his cell phone. We finally ended up getting in touch with him and took the train to Suzaka which is where we are farming. The host is a very nice guy who owns a software company in China and just has WWOOFers because he enjoys meeting people from all around the world. He and his wife have a very traditional and very beautiful Japanese house with ponds/coy fish and the like. There are two other WWOOFers here- a guy from England and a girl from Japan. They are really nice and it is especially nice to be able to talk to someone in English! The most interesting part about Japan so far is how little English they speak. I assumed that most people would at least be able to understand us but it is not the case at all....many gestures have been necessary.

Anyways, we are staying with really nice people and they like to drink! We tried a few different types of Japanese beer (all very good) and the host even came over and drank with us. He had us try some special drinks and the six of us finished a bottle of Jack Daniels that he brought out! He showed us his Samuri sword and let us hold it, and we basically ended up hanging out with him and the two other WWOOFers until very late! Today we spent the whole entire day harvesting apples. It is a really beautiful place with moutains all around us. Not a bad deal considering we are given meals and a very nice accomodation for free. All in all, we are very happy to be here and we think apple picking is a good way to ease into our farming adventures.