The first days on Sado

In this blog entry I tell about my experiences on the island Sado. I lived there by a host family with two children. A nine year old girl and a five year old boy. I went to Sado because I wanted to work with horses and my host family searched for somebody who can care for their horses. This was the reason why I moved to them. I lived on the island round about three month and about my experiences you can read in this and following entries.

My first whole day on Sado was the 10.03.2020. I like to tell you about this and following days.

The cat Chai has decided to wake me up before 6a.m. because she wanted to be petted. And guess who started sleeping on my blanket. Right, the cat. I wanted to sleep on after a while, so I lifted her carefully from my blanket.

I slept then till round about 3p.m. Then I got lunch and we drove shopping to buy extra boots, trousers and a jacket for the work in the horse stable. After the shopping we fed the horses. It was already evening, so we got a delicious dinner. Then I had for the first time a bath in the traditional Japanese way. The family heated the water with fire under a bathtub set in concrete. Before I could go into the tub I had to wash myself with water and soap, because the dirt shall not come into the tub. So I scooped water out of the tub with a bowl and so I showered. Then I could get into the nice warm water. It was a small adventure to have a bath like this. Freshly washed I went to bed then.

The next day I had to wake up at 6:30a.m. Before, the cat had woken me up again. I went downstairs in the living room to warm myself up in front of the oven because it was really cold in the house. Then I had to take care of the horses. My duty was to clean the stable and feed the horses. After it was breakfast time for the whole family.

I was allowed to ride Sacchan after breakfast. She definitely has her own head because she wanted to go home all the time. I had to earn her respect so she will accept me as her rider. But it was fun anyway. For lunch we had Mochi. We even made them by ourselves °o°.

We had brown and white Mochi. By the brown ones the rice skin was smashed also. I was allowed by the white rice to try to smash it with a big wood hammer in a big wooden bowl to get the Mochi mass. We rolled little balls by hand out of this, the so-called Mochi. We rolled them in Anko and Kinako and some we left like they were. We ate them with Shōyu and Nori then. They were very very delicious!

After lunch the girl and I learned vocabulary. She showed me an object and told me the Japanese word. I wrote it down and told her the English translation. We went on until dinner. After that I had a bath and went to bed.

The 12.03.2020 started again at 6:30a.m. I cleaned the stable and fed the horses again. Then I should go for a walk with the dog Champ.

So we moved on. I let me lead through the forest by him and he guided me up the hill to a roller slide. Also there were beautiful flowers I took a photo of.

By breakfast I heard that we will drive to the family’s rice field to meet their friends and children there. After arriving there I introduced myself and was surprised how many spoke good English. Afterwards I started to take photos. The girl wanted to see all the time how the photos turned out. It was a bit annoying.

To lunchtime we sat down around the campfire and unpacked our Bento-boxes. It was wholesome to eat lunch together around the fire. After it the boys threw a whole bunch of dried needle twigs into the fire. It created a nice tongue of flame.

Back to the house I should get the horses in. They were standing near the slide. My host father mentioned that it is enough if I call Sacchan and they will come back. But no way. Sacchan didn’t want to listen to me. She actually was running away from me. Luckily Hana showed mercy to go home after round about 10 minutes. The other horses followed her. At the stable my host father and I cared about the horses and then we got dinner after it as well.