We have now moved from the huge metropolis of Tokyo out to the Asian Rural Institute, or ARI! What an amazing trip this has been so far. We’ve had some long days and a lot of travel, but now it’s time to get introduced to the alternative food culture of ARI! Here, I’ll explain a little about what we’re doing here and our daily schedule.
We wake up early in the morning to do morning exercises, called called rajio taiso in Japanese. We all meet together to stretch along with a CD instructions. They’re all in Japanese, though, so most of us just copy what everyone else is doing. This starts at 7:00 am.
After that, we go to our morning Foodlife work. What is Foodlife? Foodlife is a term coined by ARI to emphasis the link between the two parts—food and life. It is impossible for one to exist without the other one. Morning Foodlife work is meant to have us all work together for that goal of understanding and becoming less alienated from out food.
There are many different Foodlife jobs. So far, I’ve sorted soybeans (picking out the ones that have opened already), cooked breakfast for the group, and prepared logs for the new stage they’re building. Some other people in my group have tried their hand at chopping firewood and mixing feed for the animals. We have goats, chickens, pigs, and two cats here at ARI. Here are the two friendly cats who like to sit outside the Women’s Dorm. They love attention!
We have breakfast, which is a time for the whole community to come together to sing, pray, and eat together. Almost everything that we eat comes straight from the ARI farm, so it’s all local, fresh, and not to mention delicious! We talked a lot earlier in the trip about what makes good food. I think those three qualities definitely have ARI food qualify as “good food”!
Speaking of good food, we also got a special treat of mochi making! Mochi is a traditional Japanese dish which is made of pounded rice—and by pounded, I really do mean pounded! They swing giant mallets into the rice to make this gooey paste that you can eat with soy sauce, sweet sauce, or even just plain. It’s delicious, but it super sticky and tends to get everywhere. Some of our St. Olaf students even got to try making it! Here’s a picture of it:
Here are a few more pictures from around campus for so you can get a feel for ARI. It’s actually quite large!
However, that’s just the start of our day. We have morning meeting most days, which takes place in the Chapel. There, people report on what’s going on around the ARI complex. Sometimes, if there are new people, they’ll introduce themselves then. It’s one of the core parts of the day, and really helps foster the sense of community within ARI.
After morning meeting, we St. Olaf students often have class. Often we have guest speakers come in to talk to us, however sometimes we hold a discussion-based class, not so different than we would if we were on campus! This is the time we really get to talk about what we’ve seen and relate it to our readings and lectures.
Throughout the day after that, we have lunch, more class, more Foodlife work, and dinner. After the 6:30 dinner, we’re free to work on reading or writing for the class. We really are busy all day here at ARI!
I hope this helped those of you back home get a sense of what we’re doing here. We’ll keep working hard here!
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