 Japan-Related News | Sweet Potato Picking Posted on 10 October 2013, 20:30 JST Today, the students and the teachers at the elementary school where I teach here in Utsunomiya went on field trips! Each grade went on a different field trip (so Alan, the other English teacher on duty today, went strawberry picking with one grade, and I went with the second graders). First, we took a bus to Mōka (真岡). In Mōka, we did an obstacle course and then had a picnic next to a lake. Then we took the bus to Mashiko (益子), where we picked sweet potatoes on a farm. Then we took the bus back to Utsunomiya, and along the way, we watched Tom & Jerry on the bus. Photo GalleryHere are 22 pictures that I took. Click on any of the images to enlarge it. |  |
 This is an open space in Mōka. Mōka had an obstacle course and a lake. |  2nd Graders Doing the Obstacle Course |
 More Obstacle Course |  This was a particularly scary part of the obstacle course with a risk of falling. Some of the kids, at the top of it, exclaimed "Kowai! Kowai!" ("It's scary! It's scary!"). I helped spot them. |
 A Zip Line |  This is a bright red dragonfly that a student was showing me. If someone sticks out his or her finger and holds the finger/hand/arm very still in the presence of dragonflies, they will often mistake the outstretched finger for a branch and land on it. Try it sometime. |
 One of the girls' bentō boxes. From left to right, there are: tamagoyaki (the yellow fried egg thing), sausage, chicken, apple slices, and a homemade ball of onigiri (rice ball) with a heart on it. |  Where we ate lunch in Mōka, there was a lake. We were not allowed to eat on the shore of the lake, however. Lunch was great fun. The kids were really friendly and begged me to sit with them, then loaded me up with candy, senbei (rice crackers), etc. I brought nattō, which surprised people because Westerners generally do not like nattō. |
 We could not eat on the shore. However, there was no reason we could not go down to the shore temporarily. Here are some carp. |  Some people, who were not affiliated with my elementary school, were throwing crumbs into the water. The carp were gathering by the shore because those people were throwing them crumbs. |
 They were splashing so much, I was worried about my smart phone getting wet. My hand got wet from all the splashing. I asked a fellow teacher what these fish were called. She said "koi." Of course I had already known about koi for many years, but did not realize that the word could apply to carp that were not gold, orange, white, etc., too. |  After lunch, we got back on the bus. We went to Mashiko. Here is the farm that we arrived at in Mashiko. |
 Here is a plot with sweet potatoes. Note that the farmer (shown in the picture) had marked off areas with chalk, so that each student and teacher could have his/her own area to dig. We had no shovels; we dug with our hands, which were protected with gunte (軍手, cotton work gloves). I used the lucky pair that I had worn during my Gozaisho winter ascent. It must have paid off, because I found 12 sweet potatoes! |  View of Some Rice Paddies and So Forth in Mashiko |
 A Child Digging for Sweet Potatoes |  Chickens in a Coup |
 Another Agricultural Field Nearby | A 2nd Grader and I, with the Vice Principal in the Background on the Right |
 Students Getting Back on the Bus with Rice Paddies in the Background in Mashiko |  In this picture, kids are attentively and enthusiastically watching Tom & Jerry. The episode is "The Night Before Christmas," which a Wikipedia search revealed was originally released on December 6, 1941—making it a timeless classic, and also the day before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor drew America into World War II! |
 When I got home, I washed off one of the sweet potatoes. Then I cut a section of it into 12 pieces and made these sweet potato French fries, similar to the ones I used to eat in Taiwan at Dan Dan Hanbao. |  The Dan Dan Hanbao-esque French Fries, Salted, with Ketchup I heard various uses for the sweet potatoes on the bus. Tempura was mentioned frequently. |
