Cows, Milk and Steak

At the end of April, I was invited to join a barbecue with Team Oz - a collection of Australians, Japanese who once lived in Australia, and random Americans who also work for AtoZ.  With my inclusion, the tally of Australians was now up to two.

We met up in Chino, a town 30 minutes south of Shimosuwa, and bought a heap of supplies.

Amy

Phil and I, as the Australians, were tasked with creating fire and cooking.  I think we did a pretty good job.

It was a perfect spring day, and when we started playing frisbee, we were joined by a bunch of other guys in the park.  We pulled out the plastic cricket set next, but this didn't interest our new companions.  That didn't stop us from making a mockery of the proud sport.  The Americans barely even knew what cricket is.  It was particularly funny trying to explain the terminology to them, such as going out as a duck.

"Why am I a duck?" one of them kept crying.

We later decided that it was unfair to go out until someone had at least one run to their name.

"Why am I no longer a duck?  How do I become a duck again?"  He paused.  "Wait, so what's a duck?"

Hilltop picnic area

Another April adventure appeared with my apartment acquaintances.  (How's that for alliteration?)  We packed the eight of us in two cars and headed to a farm - an unusual destination for Japan, perhaps.  Part of the reason for this is because Momoko really loves cows.  She's a vet and worked closely with cows in Paraguay, where she lived for a while.

When we approached the cows at the farm, she got extremely excited.

Momoko and her new friend

A very friendly friend indeed

Getting friendly with Sachi

Then we met Sachi, a dairy instrument.  After a lengthy explanation from our guide in Japanese, we were allowed to milk her.  It was my first time, and I couldn't help but think of the time my sister Rachel almost milked a cow as a child.  It was a good thing she didn't, because the girl who did in her stead was peed on.  I asked if this was a threat.  The guide replied that if the cow peed, we would have to clear right back, since it can project urine as far as 2-3 meters.

Not a great thing to think about when you're crouched beneath a swollen-bellied cow.

For our second activity, we split off into two groups: some rode "go-karts"...

Momoko and Phil

...while the rest of us got to ride a horse for the grand duration of about two minutes.  It was my second time aboard a horse (if you don't count Bullet, the horse swing I loved as a kid), and although it was short, I did enjoy it.  I don't know if it really counted as "riding a horse", since the horse was being led by an old man with a rope.  It was kind of funny, though.  My gap-toothed guide kept warning me not to get the horse excited, because if it pulled on the ropes and decided to gallop away, he wouldn't be able to do anything.

I kind of wanted it to happen.  It would be hilarious to see what the old man would try and do.  And I secretly believed that I would become an instant horse master; my horse and I would roam the Japanese countryside freely and live off the land for a few days.  Maybe I would even give the horse a new name... Bullet.

Alas, my dream didn't come true.

Amy

Here's another example of an animal I didn't ride off into the sunset with.

Our third and final activity was... fishing?  It was a kind of fishing, though I don't know if this qualifies as a sport...

Only three of us were allowed due to the kind of activities package we'd bought, and it was the foreigners - Phil, Amy and myself - who were nominated to yank our shoes and socks off and stick our feet in the icy cold creek.  It quickly became apparently that this is not the kind of fishing where you stay completely dry.

 

The water only just submerged my ankles, and it was the kind of cold that ached through to the bone.  The water wasn't the only problem.  The rocks I was standing on were like giant ice cubes.  I admit to being a bit of a sissy and leaping onto a rock above the water a couple of times.  It was a kind of torture.  I find it utterly bizarre when your greatest, best-case-scenario hope is that you won't even feel the ends of your limbs anymore.  Is that a kind of sadism?

Our task was to plunge our hands in and literally snatch a swimming fish out of the water.  It wasn't easy, especially as the suckers were slippery.

But they were delicious.

We threaded their bodies through with a wooden chopstick, smothered them in salt, and cooked them alive.  It was rather horrific, in a way.  I tried to imagine a more torturous way for a fish to die, and failed.

In the same sadistic vein, we sat down to a lunch produced from the ancestors of the cows we'd been playing with earlier.  Milk and beef were on the menu... and not much else.

Even Momoko tore into the steak like a hungry vulture.  When asked, she simply responded, "I love cows.  But I love steak too."  It's a juicy contradiction, one I am also unable to reconcile.

We cooked the beef and some veggies on two small barbecues in our table.  The verandah gave us a view of the farm and the cows below.  I was sure they could smell it.  Hell, while we were giving insult to injury, we might as well have been eating Bullet as well.
 

After we finished, led by the Japanese members of our team, we tidied up our own table.  I loved this so much I took a photo.  I think it's awesome that people in Japan are always prepared to clean up after themselves.

As I recently learned, they do this in the Japanese section of the crowd at World Cup events, too:

Source

It sure beats the mentality we often get in public places in Australia: "I'm not cleaning that up.  That's someone's job."

On our way out, as if we weren't done feeding off the dairy industry, we grabbed ice-creams.  They were really creamy.

After the farm, we drove to Ueda (the city I once rode my bike to from Nagano City), went bowling, and visited Ueda Castle - though only the wall remains.

We topped the day off with an all-you-can-eat pizza, pasta and dessert restaraunt.  This wasn't second-class food either - it was damn good, and we paid for it twice: our wallets lightened, and our stomachs bloated.  I admit to having even more ice-cream.

And then I couldn't shake the thought that it's the dairy industry that's feeding off us, not the other way around.