A letter (of sorts) to my homestay family
Gaby Mancey-Jones
DS2021

Dear Chiharu, Kooichi, and Nagi,
I’m so sorry I haven’t been in touch! Things have been a little crazy in the months since I left
Itoshima, and that promised letter never got written. In its place, I’ve jotted down this handful ofmemories from that wonderful September.
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Storm
The house where I spend September is a remarkable kominka, a traditional Japanese farmhouse with a gabled roof and long sliding doors on either side, opening up entirely to theelements on hot days. Under the western gable, a hive of wasps had set up camp, fat vicious
yellow things which would hum over fallen persimmons in the driveway from morning until dusk.
My room, in the annex building, is as close to living outside as I can imagine. Every evening, theroom fills with insects: enormous green crickets, resting butterflies, on one occasion anenormous death’s head hawk moth, the pattern of a skull on its abdomen hovering just abovemy head. Geckos, too, whose Japanese name fills me with delight: yamori, “home protectors”,whose ghostly imprints scurry around the windows to the kitchen and bathroom every night.
A couple of weeks into my stay, a typhoon skims the coast of Japan, bringing night gales which
shake the building to their foundation. Hot gusts of wind make the windows in my annex room
rattle, waking me at intervals: 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am… Looking out, I can see bamboo on thehillsides swaying furiously, as I nervously try to understand the landslide alerts that haveappeared, in mercilessly complex Japanese, on my phone.

HoneyOne day not long after I arrive, we kit ourselves in white beekeepers suits and shuffle into thegarden, ready to tackle the hive. Of the five of us, two get stung quickly, my panicking nothelping Kooichi as a bee manages to fly into his veiled hat and sting him on the cheek. Once thebees have settled, the honey is prised from the hive, and brought inside to be cut up andstrained. After tumbling the sliced honeycomb in the metal straining container, clumps of it
remain. These are tipped into a bowl, and placed next to another bowl with a mesh strainer
balanced above it. Sat in a circle, we take fistfuls of honeycomb and squeeze them above thestrainer, honey moving slowly down my wrists and forearms, and collecting in thick amberwaves in the bowl below me. Conversation is murmured and fragmented, a deep sense of calm
pooling around our little impromptu workshop, until I let out a cry. A bee’s sting has lodged itself
in my palm, the bee to which it belonged long since gone, leaving only a little fish hook nestledin the honeycomb.

RiceOn my second weekend, a group of university students come to help weed the rice paddy.
We’re each handed a kama, a little curved scythe, and after a brief explanation we begin.
Stepping into the paddy, each forward step is greeted with a burst of grasshoppers and crickets
flying off in all directions like a tiny firework. In between the tall stalks, fat black aquatic snails
shuffle slowly under the water, whilst the occasional green frog darts by. At first I try to walk inwellies, but the mud grips and pulls until I’m rooted to the spot; barefoot like the rest is fareasier. Ankle deep in warm mud, arms covered in thin red welts from brushing against paperthin rice leaves, the sense of connection to the fellow fifteen or so people around me, allhunched and brandishing kama as we pull out weeds, becomes unthinkably strong.

Fire
In the evening after a day of weeding, we have a bonfire. To my delight, a box of fireworks isproduced, and I am given a whistle stop tour of the world of miniature Japanese pyrotechnics.
Most of the names now escape me, but at one point I am handed a senko hanabi, similar to aBritish sparkler but hanging loose as a string instead. A little game is played, where thoseholding one senko hanabi each must try to protect the delicate flame from the wind, andencourage it to burn the longest. Watching the tiny sputtering flame working its way up thestring, I am told in mercifully simple Japanese about the way it represents Wabi-Sabi, theJapanese concept of accepting impermanence. A few more sparks, and it goes out.

IceThe next week, I spend a morning playing in the sea with a group of kindergartners from Nagichan’s school. Nagi’s name is taken from the word nagi, meaning ‘a still, waveless sea’, forwhich the beaches of Itoshima are famous. In the warm, shallow water, the children delight inusing me variously as a climbing frame, a bridge, a laughing stumbling obstacle course. At one
point, Yocchan and Nagi decide to “wash my hair”. Eyes closed in the water, it feels almost
luxurious, until I realise the “shampoo” is handfuls of black sand; for days after, I am still shaking
it from my scalp.
In the afternoon, we nap, all of us, adults included, on the tatami floor of the kindergarten. Afteran hour of stillness, hearing the children shuffle and kick in their sleep as light filters throughmakeshift curtains, we awake groggy but excited for the promised kakigoori. Kakigoori, aJapanese summer snack of syrup poured over shaved ice, can be made at home with a block ofice and a rickety plastic machine, and these are laid out on the table when we wake. The
syrups, flavoured with shiso, plum, and strawberry, are all homemade. The children take turns
spinning the handle, as flurries of ice come pouring out into the bowl.

Bamboo
A couple of days before leaving, I climb into the back of Kooichi’s pick-up truck with three othervolunteers, ready to drive into the forests on the edges of the rice paddies to gather bamboo forthe upcoming rice harvest. This bamboo will be used to make supports for drying the sheaves ofrice. That day’s sky, like most that month, is a beautiful chalk blue, and the air out over thepaddies is fresh, but it is hot and humming with mosquitoes in the forest. Kooichi shows us
which bamboo stalks to go for, how to hack at their base with our little blades before tugging
them free from the overstory, entangled as they are with vines and branches, before
manoeuvring them into the dirt road to cut away their leaves. After an hour or so, the back of thetruck is precariously stacked with long pipes of bamboo, and we squeeze in around them, sun
on our face as we drive out of the forest and back into sunlight of the valley.
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There was a lot, lot more I could have written about, mostly people: teaching little bits of mymostly forgotten French to Chiharu in the kitchen in the evening, watching The Moomins andCurious George with Nagi on lazy afternoons, an early morning hike with Mirume, Yocchan andIma and Rinji and Seo and Ayu and all the other children from the kindergarten, whose drawings
now occupy the walls above my desk.
For now, this isn’t quite the place, in this already overly long blogpost/letter/funny hybrid.
So instead, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
The other day, in the street, I heard a child singing a familiar theme song: “さ、追いで、僕のところへ・・・”
If you’ll have me, I would love to one day visit again, 君たちのところへ.
All the best,Gaby[Photos are all courtesy of Chiharu (Instagram: itoshimash) or Mirume (Instagram:torinomirume); thank you so much for letting me use them, and for taking so many beautiful
photos whilst I was there!)