Hello everyone, I’m Ringo! Recently Luna and I attended our first event in Michi no Eki Aso. Today, Luna and I participated in our first experience at Michi no Eki: digging potatoes!
After a 40-minute drive, we arrived at the town of Namino. Once there, we met the friendly local elders, and they led us to the potato field . Besides Michi no Eki staff, some elementary students from Kumamoto City also joined us for the fun of digging potatoes.
This was our first farming experience!
After a brief introduction to the day`s activities and the other participants, we got to the field, and started digging potatoes immediately. It was so much fun! We were like groundhogs, kept digging and digging nonstop.
It was funny that our potato-digging methods evolved just like the times! We started off digging with our bare hands, then moved on to loosening the soil with shovels before digging them out with our hands. Finally, a special potato-digging machine came and shook all the potatoes onto the ground, so we just had to pick them up. In the end, we each took home two big bags of potatoes!
After digging up all those potatoes, we went back to where we hosted by the local elders for lunch. The kind elders had prepared a lot of delicacies ! They added lots of delicious side dishes for us to eat with our own Japanese lunchbox (bento) . Their cooking was amazing, especially the potato salad, miso soup, and focaccia.
After lunch, we had a potato competition. There were two grand prizes: the biggest potato and the most unique potato. Unfortunately, our potatoes didn’t win and the kids took home most of the prizes.
The sun wasn’t too strong luckily or we would have easily gotten heatstroke.
I’m looking forward to sharing the next event with you.
Ringo & Luna
