Clare Garden has been much of a surprise to me. It is a little Oasis of Japaneseness mixed with an enthusiasm for everything Western. It is basically a Tudor style house and an English garden with lots of beautiful roses and a very nice koi pond. The inside is an antique shop and a small restaurant/cafe. The cafe reminds me of a french or western style cafe where the dishes do not match, one table is a metal garden table and one is a round oak table, and the food is served in a similar, "Today's-Lunch-Plate,"style. Needless to say, my experience in Japan is a very peculiar one. All of the patrons are Japanese, and I have not seen any Gaijin, foreigners that is, beside the WWOOFers since I have been in Japan, and yet the food and atmosphere is strangely familiar and westernWorking there at first was a bit stressful becuase of Kazuko-san's personality. She is a very busy lady, running three households and a restaurant, so her stress comes into everything she does just about. She has been constantly taking in WWOOFers which I am sure adds to her stress. I think so because in Japan, guests are treated with a certain respect, and it may look bad if a someone cannot host a guest and has to refuse them. With that in mind I think Kazuko-san has been bombarded with many WWOOFers requesting stay here, and she only turns away a few.
When we first arrived and began work, Kazuko-san was a bit cold, she would not entrust us with tasks independently, so she micromanaged. But, I had to prove my capability by just working diligently, and she has warmed up greatly. I have enjoyed trimming roses and dead-heading them. One day she told me how to trim roses, probably expecting me to finish all 20 roses bushes rather quickly, instead, I took my time, and worked all day making every rose bush perfect. She liked that, so now I get to work independently. Yesterday, I finished a bit of a dry-stack wall around a garden. And I built a fire in a brick oven and made bread. Finally, some cool shit to do!
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