"What if you swap your Dutch house for a farm in rural Japan?"
You learn to plant rice with your hands in the mud, taste vegetables that are still warm from the earth, and discover that neighbors in Japan really do drop by with homemade miso. Within a month you're speaking basic Japanese and know how to cook perfect sushi rice. Pure zen among the rice fields.
Joris (31), Groningen — history teacher, collects vintage cameras
I'm standing in a rice field in Kumamoto at half past five in the morning, mud up to my ankles, while a 78-year-old farmer explains how to plant rice in broken English.
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