A summary of the month and a half I spent in Tokunoshima volunteering on a farm before the earthquake:
Every morning at 7:30 I rode a bike into the main part of town where I met a farmer named Fuku-san. I'd get in the front seat of his truck, and he'd drive down the road to pick up his 93 year old mother. Now sandwiched between the door and obāsan, we would drive about 15 minutes into the hills to one of Fuku-san's fields. Fuku-san grows potatoes and sugarcane primarily, and his fields are scattered throughout the area among those of other farmers.
Once at the field, Fuku-san's sister would usually join us, and all of us, 93 year old woman included, would start harvesting the potatoes. A tractor was used to loosen the ground and upturn most of the potatoes, leaving us to dig through with our hands and gather them in plastic crates. It required squatting and kneeling almost constantly for 2 hour periods at a time. When I first started it was nearly impossible to keep that kind of a pose for so long, but I got more used to it as time went on.
At around 10 we would break for tea. Crates were turned over as chairs and tables, and green tea (loose leaf) was brewed quickly in a small kettle. There were okashi, snacks to eat with tea. Sometimes they were osembei, Japanese crackers, and other things I was familiar with. Obāsan would regularly bring homemade tsukemono (Japanese pickles), oranges, and an island food called sātā andāgī, fried balls of dough similar to donuts. After a 15 minute break, we'd go right back to work for another 2 hours.
At lunch time, I would eat my own bento lunch. Fuku-san and family packed rice for each person and ate okazu from a communal pot heated up by a gas stove. Fuku's sister would leave for the sushi bar she worked at. She was usually replaced by Fuku's wife and son in the afternoon. Work continued until 5 p.m. with another tea break in between—9 hours of work including breaks for tea and lunch. I'd be driven back to town, and I'd return home by bike, dead tired.
The woman who's house I was staying at was named Yoneda. She spoke English fairly well and regularly lodged foreign visitors to the island. Yoneda-san was kind enough to prepare a bento lunch for me every day as well as make dinner each night. Her cooking was delicious. During the day she worked shifts at a hospital and maintained her own mixed vegetable and herb garden on the island. Yoneda-san was also a member of Sōka Gakkai, an international lay movement based in Nichiren Buddhism. The organization is controversial, some calling it a cult, but I can't say I felt threatened by being there. She did really want me to attend some meetings, so I ended up going with her once or twice.
Sometimes I would get rainy days off from work since it is hard to harvest potatoes in the rain. Other days rain just meant working in the sugar cane field instead, chopping and stripping the leaves from the cane and wrapping them in tight bundles. Tokunoshima produces a kind of unrefined brown sugar from its sugar cane that is sold everywhere on the island.
On the days I did have off (and if the rain let up) I would try exploring the miles of beaches, cliffs and tide pools around the island. The island is too big and hilly to easily navigate by bike, so Yoneda-san took me by car a couple times to the island's more famous sights.
Every once in a while, Fuku-san would invite me for sushi and beer at the bar where his sister worked. We'd attempt to make conversation between my awful Japanese and the occasional English word from Fuku-san. After a while, he would insist on drinking shōchū. It's a Japanese distilled liquor brewed from potatoes or rice. In Tokunoshima, shōchū made from both potatoes and from brown sugar is popular. It also seemed like every new farmer I met was always eager to take me drinking and introduce me to shōchū.
It's worth mentioning that Tokunoshima is also home to a native kind of bull fighting called tōgyu. There are no matadors. Two bulls fight head to head in an arena. I didn't see it since I was staying during the offseason, but I saw bulls everywhere being prepped for the summer.
People on the island would speak in Ryūkyū-ben off and on, which meant sometimes I thought I was trying to understand Japanese, but really was hearing a completely different dialect. In general, the people seemed completely different than people in Tokyo. People in Tokunoshima were always very open, warm, and easygoing. It was a personality type that I wasn't used to seeing so often in Tokyo. Yoneda-san joked that farmers on the island run on "island time" which means that they show up at least 10 minutes late to everything.
My work in the potato and sugar cane fields carried on for a good month and a half until the time of the earthquake, and a week later I was forced to leave for Korea. Now I'm back in Tokyo attending classes again. It would have been nice to stay longer than I did, but I really enjoyed the time that I was able to spend on the island.