Rice Planting (Photos)

The weekend of June 11-13 I was in the "planting spirit."

On Friday, June 11, I began a little garden on my back . . . patio?

But, on Sunday I helped plant RICE!!!

So, this would have been a cool way to plant rice.

Or this. But both ways were completed before I got there.

So, Cindy and I planted by hand. I'm in the back there.

And Aya let us walk up and down the rows looking for places the machines missed. I was so muddy!

This is Aya. Her family owns the rice field we worked in. I was so afraid I was not planting the rice right. But when I asked how I was doing, she always insisted, "It's perfect!" I'm sure she was just being nice, but I suppose that means that maybe the crop will still grow despite anything I did.

This is a video of me demonstrating my fabulous rice planting skills.

Afterwards (which was like only an hour later, from 12-1, a short time to plant rice considering Aya had been out there since 5am), Aya's family treated us to Japanese BBQ. As you can see from the photos, it's not quite like our BBQ. Of course, I always thought "Barbeque" meant pork or chicken with BBQ sauce and "grilling" refered to choice meats and veggies, and "cooking out" meant hot dogs and hamburgers, but I've been wrong before and perhaps am so again, because Cindy says BBQ refers to all the above.

Anyhow, whatever it is called back home, this was definitely different (I mean, it was indoors) and it was quite fancy.