(26. October – 12. November 2018)
In Sasayama I started working at my first Wwoofer Host, in an Italian restaurant.
Arriving in Sasayama I walked a 1-hour-walk to the restaurant of my Host, as he was busy with giving an TV interview about his pizza.
My daily tasks were consisting of:
vacuuming the whole restaurant and mopping everything. After the general cleaning I prepared the salads for the day by cutting vegetables. Soon we had our first customer and I began serving, sometimes cooking noodles and washing the dishes. Of course the pizza was always baked by my Host father. (e.g. Margarita, vegetable pizza, wild boar pizza, four cheese pizza and other many pizza).
We have made one noon break, in which I discovered the city and its temples and shrines. And the restaurant closed at 8 p.m. most of the time. While on Sundays my Host always treated me to one hour of Onsen. Monday was always my free day and I would either go to downtown or my Host father and I went to visit his friends.
I have met very nice people there, including the local monk, Astrid (a french lady who plays incredibly good horn) and Kenta (a Japanese man, who has his own bar at the ground floor of his house).
After more or less two weeks I had to leave earlier than initially planned and so I had to think about an alternative to stay. So I called Astrid and even though she has just one bed she offered me hers because she was at that moment travelling in Japan. Because she would return soon I also asked KEnta whether to stay ay his house when Astrid is back and because of their kindness I did not need to sleep on the street or in expensive hotels.
My impression: Sasayama is a very antique and beautiful looking town. I enjoyed totally my stay and fortunately when I arrived the autumn leaf season have already begun so the trees where decorated with yellow and burning red leafs. But also the chestnut and black bean season started and I could enjoy fresh dishes mixed with them! 🙂