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<\/a><\/p>\nWhen Sat\u014d-san was 23 years old, he got onto an ocean liner and travelled to Argentina. Thereafter, he spent about two decades working as a mechanic in South America, ending up in Columbia, where he met his wife. They went back to Japan together, raised three children, divorced, and she eventually returned to Columbia where she now lives. \u201cBut we still have very warm and friendly relations,\u201d he tells me, mentioning how his bilingual children and himself often travel to Columbia for big family gatherings.<\/p>\n
It became immediately obvious, when meeting Sat\u014d-san, why he found in South America his promised land. When he enters a room, everybody is suddenly aware of his presence: his booming voice, his bouts of open laughter, his way of looking at people straight in the eye when speaking and often touching them on the shoulder to make sure they do listen to his story; in Japan, his raw energy roots people to the spot like rabbits in the headlights of a lorry \u2014 nervous, giggling, and incapable (polite as they are) of escaping the long-lasting verbal onslaught; but in Caracas, Havana or Bogot\u00e1, he is probably just another friendly, voluble fellow.<\/p>\n
Spanish is Sat\u014d-san\u2019s only foreign language, and he treasures it immensely as his passport to the world. Sometimes he even seems seized with a compulsive, insatiable yearning for foreignness: upon entering an onsen (hot springs bath) the other day, and chancing upon a trio of bespectacled and middle-aged white people, he pounced onto them and bombarded them with questions on their origins and details of their lives and their trip in the language of Cervantes; the bemused and frightened travellers were from Texas and New Mexico, so of course they couldn\u2019t speak a word of Spanish to save their own lives, but Sat\u014d-san made a point of sustaining a nearly five-minute-long, rather one-sided but impossibly jovial conversation with them before the cowering estadounidenses<\/em> finally managed to flee him. Later on, in a supermarket, he warmly and courteously greeted a Polish woman, complimented her on her elegant dress and hat, and exchanged business cards with her; she didn\u2019t understand the slightest thing he said, but answered him in natural and graceful Japanese.<\/p>\n Sat\u014d-san has been a fully-fledged member of the Yamagishi Society for the past 23 years. As such, he has lived and worked in various jikkenchi around the country, mostly taking care of cars and lorries and other types of machinery.<\/p>\n Upon meeting me in Tsuki jikkenchi, overjoyed at having a conversation partner (although certainly not a very fluent one) at his disposal, he immediately started making plans: the following day, he would drive me to various interesting places of his choosing, all around the green and hilly Wakayama Prefecture.<\/p>\n And so we went.<\/p>\n First, we stopped by a jikkenchi that isn\u2019t one: La Hueca de Noe (name unclear), located near Tsuki, is an agricultural community run by people from the Yamagishi Society, following the same basic principles than the other jikkenchi \u2014 except that it is not an official Yamagishi community. The reason for this is that its aim is to focus exclusively on organic agriculture, as defined under Japanese law, and therefore be open to foreign WOOFFers come to stay there and work for a while \u2014 which is impossible in the \u201cofficial\u201d jikkenchi, for some reasons still unclear to me. From what I understand, the Yamagishi Society doesn\u2019t produce everything organically, as it would be too constraining. Although people at Yamagishi try their best to reduce their use of pesticides and other chemicals, their production isn\u2019t 100% organic. So in order to be able to use the label \u201cOrganic Agriculture,\u201d some Yamagishi members decided to just set up another farm where they would do things their way.<\/p>\n We then drove to Shirahama, a town which, due to its famous seaside onsen, has turned over the years from a charmingly remote village into a concrete-laden, overdeveloped seaside monstrosity. As the museum dedicated to the genius scholar, naturalist and author Minakata Kumagusu<\/a> \u2014 allegedly a speaker of 10+ languages \u2014 was closed, Sat\u014d-san took me to the wondrous Adobenchaa Waarudo<\/strong>.<\/p>\n For a while, I couldn\u2019t quite understand his explanations regarding what kind of place it was, and the name puzzled me; it was obviously a foreign name in its Japanese rendition \u2014 maybe the name of its founder, some strange gaijin<\/em> (possibly Czech) named Aldo Bencha? \u201cAldo Bencha Ward,\u201d surely that was the English denomination of that exotic spot we were headed to, and which Sat\u014d-san seemed so excited about! Possibly another museum or distinguished mansion of some kind\u2026<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until we actually got there and I saw the sign at the entrance that I realised how wide of the mark I was (and how poor at decyphering katakana): the name was, of course, \u201cAdventure World<\/a>\u201d; it was an animal theme park, famous for its aquatic shows, and for being the only place in Japan where pandas can be bred (all progeny must be sent over to China, obviously).<\/p>\n So I followed Sat\u014d-san to two different shows, one featuring otters, dogs, a monkey, a parrot, a hawk, a seal, hulla hoops, and apoplectically cheerful emcees making sure the audience remained a-clapping throughout the show; the other starring dolphins, false killer whales, and exceedingly fit young stuntpeople of both sexes surfing on the backs and nozzles of the former and being launched to inhuman heights by the vigorous and playful cetaceans. We also visited the most depressing penguin vivarium ever, ambled along in earsplitting noise from the loudspeakers everywhere, and sat down to some noodles. Then, over coffee, we talked. Or rather, I listened \u2014 doing my best to shift gears in time with Sat\u014d-san as he held forth in a steady flow of Spanish and Japanese.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n