Indigo Days

Radiation in Japan

Above photo: Hiroshi Furukawa photos                                                        Below Map: Just World Map

The first thing that people asked me when in the States in early June was, “How bad is it in Japan?”

I gave the only possible answer, “Bad. Very, very bad.”

Radiation is here to stay and it won’t abate anytime soon.

But what exactly does that mean?

Tepco is nowhere close to getting the situation under control and in their efforts to keep cooling the melted down reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, they are creating massive amounts of highly radioactive water with no place to store it. Efforts to filter, then recycle the water have not been highly successful. So far.

Radiation is slowly seeping into the air and leaching into the ground supply. The dismal prognosis is that we could be living with these low-grade radioactive releases for perhaps a decade or more.

For us, 215 kilometers from Fukushima Daiichi, it’s hard to gauge the long-term effects. Now four and a half months after the Tohoku Earthquake, life in outer Saitama meanders along as if it all never happened. No one really talks about the radiation or the fact that tens of thousands of people from Miyagi prefecture are still living in shelters all over Japan. We continue to eat local produce, and as it stands now, there is no immediate threat. I love how we are told there is no “immediate” danger from the radiation.

But then, what else can we do? Where could we possibly go? And do we really need to? Recently, my 16-year-old son Andrew somehow convinced me that riding a scooter to work would be safer than riding a bike. Having just read an article on the high risk of cyclists being hit by passing motorists, he caught me at a good moment. I weighed the risks, and gave in to letting him buy a scooter. Does he have a better chance of getting killed on the scooter than getting cancer at 46? Definitely.

Risk is all around us. And if any of you are parents, you will know the agony of letting our child go out on the street on his or her bike for the first time alone. Or of letting our teenagers drive, or even go out with friends. What are they doing? Are they drinking…smoking…or, god forbid, drugging?

So perhaps we are all playing Russian roulette with the future health of our children, but one thing I am certain, every other part of our life is pristinely “clean.” We live in an 80-year-old traditional sod and wood farmhouse that breathes real air (and dust) from the outdoors. We do not use air conditioning (even in the sweltering summer), or forced air heat. We eat simple foods with no additives or chemicals. We do not buy prepared foods.

In the last 23 years, I have seen Japan embrace convenience stores and readymade foods with a vengeance. While this food certainly (on the surface) appears more healthy than the typical fast food available in the United States, make no mistake that the so-called well-balanced bento box meals available at convenience stores on almost every corner in Japan are laden with chemicals and preservatives. It’s cheap food made cheaply. 

Maybe now is the time to take back the heart of Japan. Maybe now is the time to go back to a simple farm diet. Miso, soy sauce, salt, and vinegar. Those are the true preserving agents of Japan. People can’t do much about the increase of radiation in their lives, but they can do something about what they put in their bodies or in the bodies of their children. Now is the time to embrace clean food.

So where can people find this clean food? Farmers.

Sadly, farming in the Kanto region (eastern Japan) has taken a huge hit because many Tokyoites are boycotting food from the whole region. Kind of mind-boggling when you think about the fact that parts of Kanto are certainly further away from Tokyo than parts of Kansai. You can’t just boycott a whole region. It makes no logical sense. Also it is effectively destroying lives of farmers who have no problem with radiation on their crops. But Tokyoites as urban dwellers have little connection to, or understanding of, the land or of the people who have been growing the food that has been consumed in their city for generations.

I find it ironic that Fukushima Daiichi was built to supply energy to Tokyo, and not used by the local inhabitants. Ironic that some people in Tokyo can turn away from the people and area that kept them supplied with food and energy. Ironic and sad.

But I suppose it’s all about ignorance and lack of transparency. The truth is, there have been many lies told about the situation at Fukushima Daiichi. A source in the Chinese embassy reports that the Japanese foreign office gathered heads of foreign embassies together a few days after the earthquake and advised them to evacuate their citizens. This news comes as no surprise to me as on March 17, I had reported via Facebook,

“The American government took a sharp right turn on its stance early today, deviating from the Japanese party line, by urging American citizens in a 80 km radius of the nuclear reactor to evacuate or stay inside (as opposed to the 20 km-30 km advised by the Japanese government). But realistically, there is nowhere for the Japanese to go, even if they did start advising more drastic evacuation.

Late this afternoon, the American government took an even stronger position and has initiated "authorized evacuations" for American citizens who want to leave Japan.

More rumors circulate that Tepco families at Fukushima Daiichi left right after the earthquake. And the head of Tepco was MIA for a couple weeks post-earthquake. The Japanese press (which relies heavily on ad revenue from nuclear power related sources) was mild in it’s reporting of the nuclear disaster. The foreign press was vilified for being sensationalist, and foreigners despised for “escaping,” were called “flyjins” (a take off on “gaijin” or “foreigner” in Japanese).

But most unconscionable is that the Japanese government did not tell its citizens about the huge release of radiation following a hydrogen blast on March 12 in Reactor No. 1, until two months after the release. So in the end, were those foreigners so wrong to leave? No. In fact, they should have left sooner. WE should have left sooner. On Tuesday, March 15, I got an email from my older sister Pam telling me to send the boys to the U.S. When I mentioned it to my husband Tadaaki, he looked at me and walked away without a word, having given no credence to Pam’s (apparent) over reaction. Thursday night, he started to think otherwise, and by Friday, Tadaaki’s position was that I should leave with the boys and he’d “hold down the fort” with his 83-year-old mom, and our cat and dog. Oh, and the 3000 chickens.

Tadaaki tried to pack Baachan (granny) off onto the bullet train to Kansai to stay with his brother, as he had some wild idea of grabbing the cat and dog and jumping into his van to outrun the imminent nuclear blast. Once his gas ran out, he was prepared to run. Oh yes, another point was that, mysteriously, gasoline was hard to come by, so no one could get very far even if they wanted to. Mysterious.

But, all that doesn’t matter any more, because obsessing about what happened in the past is pointless. Life is now and we should not let the presence of radiation consume us. Who really knows, or who can really understand, how much radiation is around us, or what that means in the long run. I certainly don’t.

 

 

 

I check in periodically to NHK World: Society & Others and I get updates from the New York Times on the nuclear disaster. Otherwise, I read the Japan Times twitter feed and sometimes click to the links. If I’m feeling like it.

Right now I have the field calling my name as the weeds are already starting to engulf. The hot, hot unusually dry spell that lasted for most of June and July segued into a cool typhoon. Bringing what I hear was “black rain.” Oh dear.

No time to worry about the black rain since there’s nothing I can do about it, so I carry on with our lives. My Japanese Farm Food manuscript and photos are due September 1^st, and I’m thinking in a more positive vein. I’m thinking about how simply (and naturally) we live and about how clean the air is in our house and this little agricultural area in which we live. And I’d not trade this way of life (radiation and all) for life in the Bay Area where I grew up, because even there I feel far removed from the farm and this “real” way of life.

And as for the Tokyo people who are shunning Kanto produce…well Tokyo can be a fickle town. But then the sense of community has been long lost in urban areas. And that sense of community is really what created the collective energy that enabled Japan to rise up from the ashes of World War II. I wonder if now there will be a renewed interest in recapturing the rural customs of cooperation and mutual support.

I hope so.

Tokanya

All Photos this Post by Toshiji Tomori

I skirted the gray block wall along our driveway and rounded the corner onto the street in front of our house. I could barely make out the figures in the dim light of the lone streetlight, and only the flash of Tomori-san’s camera illuminated the ropes pounding on the pavement. “Tokanya, waradepo yomochi kutte, buttatake!” (Tokanya, straw gun, eat mochi in the nighttime, shoot!)

 

 

A car came up fast behind me and I yelled, “Car!” and stepped aside quickly as the driver did not show signs of slowing. “Car…Car!” The figures scattered, but took up their cries right after,“Tokanya, waradepo yomochi kutte, buttatake!” Thwak. The crack of the “straw gun” on the pavement wakes up the sleeping winter bugs and kills them (metaphorically). After the rice harvest, in the late autumn we make “straw guns” called waradepo for Tokanya, an ancient farming rite to send off the rice field god to the mountains. Our friends come over to help us pound mochi and we eat in the garden at torch light.

Normally celebrated the 10^th day in the 10^th month in the lunar year, it should have been held the day before (November 15), but Tadaaki kindly agreed to wait a day so that I could participate. My JAL flight now gets into Haneda airport too late to get home to Saitama, so I spent the night at the airport hotel and hopped the train in the morning. Feeling a bit discombobulated, I set to unpacking with uncharacteristic haste (usually my bags hang around the tatami room for a couple weeks as I slowly chip away at them). This time I was determined to wipe the traces of my third and last overseas trip this fall and reenter life in Japan without the typically bumpy transition period.

But the publisher discussions and book contract were both in limbo, so I too felt “in between.” When I got home that morning, I asked Tadaaki if there was anything I could do to help. He shook his head and told me, “It’s under control. Yoshie is coming at 4:00 and the rest of the people are coming around 5.” So I went back in the house to unpack.

 

 

My editor friend Kim Schuefftan showed up at 4, then disappeared. I went upstairs for a while only to come down and find a strange girl in the kitchen. Not Yoshie. Tadaaki has a fairly loose style to his events and gives little instruction to his helpers. I never did learn the girl’s name, but she did bumble about in our kitchen. Yoshie eventually showed up with another friend in tow, and at one point all three girls were stirring and skimming the soup together. I never have understood why it takes so many people to do one task here. I guess it is the sense of comradery and also the feeling that if one is not working, one is being lazy or warui to the group.

Warui is roughly translated as “bad.” The usage is fairly common, however, since this is a completely Japanese cultural concept. If someone does something for you, your response will often be warukatta, ne. Oh I was so bad to have received this from you…oh it was so bad of me to put you out for cooking this for me. My mother-in-law uses it a lot. Me, not so much. Bad American wife, I guess.

And I suppose as the “wife,” I should have been the one feeling badly for not helping, but already the plan was out of my control, careening along without direction. Tadaaki tends to whoosh in, give a few minimal cooking commands and then spin back off to the eggs, chickens, or deliveries. I am the opposite, completely controlling in the kitchen and not one to let people go willy-nilly. When I make the kenchinjiru, I like to slice the vegetables myself because I want them all to be the right size and thickness to cook at the same pace. Good enough is not where I look to end up. Each ingredient deserves to shine, so the finished dish should not be messed up by unwitting mistakes of well-meaning, yet untutored assistants. But if the cooks at Chez Panisse could let me blunder about in their kitchen, I suppose I should be more forgiving (and flexible). Though I do relax the “rules” when it comes to little kids—but then I’m just serving ourselves and not a crowd of thirty or forty hungry adults.

 

 

It used to be that the countrywomen all spoke the same language of food and knew how to prepare the same dishes. Today that is not true, as most young women do not learn to cook from their mothers, and there are few farming families passing along traditions. Mothers (and even grandmothers) work, so supermarket prepared foods regularly appear on the table; and convenience store foods are eaten in the car on the way home or in transit to study school. After all, there is no mess in the kitchen if one eats in the car or re-heats in the microwave. At a recent Japanese food event in Napa, there was much talk of seasonality and local foods in Japan…but the reality is much more bleak. Though I suppose those convenience store bento meals are better balanced than MacDonald’s and actually look like real meals, as long as you don’t mind inferior ingredients, MSG, and preservatives. Did I mention that I’m not a fan of convenience store or prepared foods? But then our kitchen is never pristine, so that’s the trade off.

 

 

Tokanya, manju stealing at Jugoya and even mochi making at New Year have all virtually died out in Japan. Our family never gave up on mochi pounding in the garden at New Year, but it wasn’t until recently that Tadaaki revived Tokanya and Jugoya in our house. Having home businesses, trying to grow food for the family, and bringing up three small homeschooled sons stretched both Tadaaki and me to the thinnest point where sometimes I wondered when we would break. Yet somehow when I did not have energy, Tadaaki did and visa versa. So we survived those years. Unfortunately, mushroom hunting and wild berry gathering in the mountains did not. Though somehow we managed to keep river trips and fishing expeditions alive in the summer. I guess it was the cool water in the impossibly sweltering summers that pushed me to get on board these excursions. In contrast, climbing up the mountain with little babies did not seem as appealing (or practical).

 

 

But all of this takes energy. And as I look around me, I realize that most (though not all) of our friends who are trying to live off the land or revive dying country customs are all transplants from the city (me included). I suppose we do not have the weight of generations past pulling us down a bit and I suppose we bring some naïve energy to the equation. But then I look at Tadaaki and Suka-san, carrying on the farming life, college degrees in hand. A new generation of farmers who choose the land, because the land chose them. They both live and breathe farming in a way that we transplants will never be able to, yet we transplants also bring a fresh wind to the area, and so our partnerships have a spirit of dynamism backed by mutual support and respect.

 

And as I stood there on the street that night of Tokanya, I thought about how the old customs clash with the new. About the cars zooming down our old neighborhood street no longer lined with old farmhouses—now razed for large prefab versions that the younger couples favor. And about Tadaaki leading the kids and friends as they banged their “straw guns” on the pavement—as if they owned the street and the cars were the intruders. And I thought about the shishimai dancers who had come to celebrate the sending off of the rice harvest gods and that we can do this because we do it together. We fight the fight to keep those traditions alive because that is the heart of Japan and without them there is no life.

 

Kenchinjiru (Country Soup with Vegetables): Traditionally, this was a vegetarian soup made with root vegetables, tofu, konnyaku, and perhaps dried shiitake for depth of flavor. But we often make a broth from our Christmas duck carcasses for the kenchinjiru we make at New Year…because we have them. In this case, add some sliced ginger and a few generous stalks of Japanese negi (substitute thick spring onions or thin leeks) to the fresh duck bones (I use the term “fresh” loosely because actually we freeze the raw carcasses whole in Ziploc bags). Alternatively, I like to make a stock from the cooked bones of roasted chickens that I stuffed with garden thyme branches and Mochizuki-san’s lemons, quartered. Our chickens are so sublime that I add nothing but water along with the thyme sprigs and drippings off the cutting board. I tried to cook the soup all night but the gas alarm company called my mother-in-law in the middle of the night and she crept upstairs to wake my husband. He has now nixed the overnight cook method. This deeply flavorful chicken soup makes an unforgettable ramen broth for homemade ramen; also I see it as a base for a mochi-less kenchinjiru. For a vegetarian broth, I would add a generous piece or two of konbu kelp to a large pot of cold water and bring it almost to a boil before removing the kelp and then proceed to make the root vegetable soup.

To prepare: scrub equal amounts of carrots, gobo (burdock root), and daikon with a rough brush (tawashi). Slice into thin rounds, half rounds or quarters depending on thickness of the roots. The vegetables should be fairly uniform in thickness and size, as you will be cooking them together and eating the soup with chopsticks. Peel and slice the same amount of taro root (satoimo) as you did for each of the other vegetables. Keep the daikon and taro each in separate bowls. Cut horizontally through a block or two of best quality soft tofu (in Japan use momendofu), then crosswise into 6 x 4 pieces (thus creating a dice). Slice usuage into ¼” strips (Tadaaki cuts them again horizontally to make pieces, I prefer them a little long and dangly). If the usuage is not fresh, pour hot water over to take off any unpleasant odors—or maybe just skip it.

Film organic canola oil in large soup pot, and sauté sliced carrots and gobo for a few minutes before adding the sliced daikon. Stir and sauté a minute or so longer, then add hot homemade broth (duck, chicken or konbu kelp). Throw in the sliced taro and bring to a boil and cook until the vegetables are getting soft, but not falling apart. Slide in the tofu, usuage and konnyaku (see below), and simmer a few minutes more until heated through. Season with organic soy sauce to taste and serve with a bowl of white rice on the side if there is no mochi in the soup. Pass shichimi togarashi (7-spice powder) for those who like a little extra kick.

Optional konnyaku: Fill a large pot half way with water, toss in a small handful of salt and bring to a boil. While the water is heating, tear the konnyaku into 1½” round misshapen blobs (a little bigger than bite-sized). If using mochi, slice konnakyu instead into thin strips (1½” x ¼”). Boil konnyaku pieces for 15 minutes in salted water, drain, and reserve.

Optional mochi: drop pieces of hot mochi into soup and eat immediately. 

 

Making Washi

Going anywhere with a motley crew of preschoolers is always a challenge, and guaranteed to tax anyone’s patience. But try packing a gaggle of exuberant little English-speaking Japanese kids onto an excursion bus for a craft museum visit. Even a 5-minute walk to the field, leaves us frazzled and exasperated. But that doesn’t mean we don’t do it. Because we do.

I’m always scrounging around for new venues for field trips with my Sunny-Side Up! preschool students. One little impediment is that most places only conduct classes or demonstrations in Japanese. Since we’re an English Immersion Preschool, that doesn’t work. A couple of months ago, we had a photographer from England visiting. He was in Japan shooting mountain towns to document their unfortunate demise. Randomly, I took him to a culturally and agriculturally thriving little town about 40 minutes away by car. I hadn’t been there since my first year in Japan, so didn’t know what to expect. We had no joy at the craft beer place. Monday is their off day. We also never found Kaneko-san’s place, a well-known organic grower friend of our own local grower friends. On one last whim, we followed the signs to a place optimistically named Saitama Traditional Craft Hall. They too were shuttered up, I guess nothing much happens on Mondays in Ogawa-machi. But peering through the smoked glass windows, the Craft Hall looked promising and so the next day I had my assistant make the call.

For about $2 per person, the kids could each make a sheet of paper. That sounded like a good deal to me, so we reserved for our upcoming field trip. I figured I’d deal with the issue of Japanese explanations when we got there. My theory was that the ladies could tell us the instructions, then we’d tell the kids how to make the paper in English. Yeah, that was the theory. Try getting Japanese ladies of “a certain age” to follow those rules.

The Japanese part was a disaster, but the kids had fun and the paper turned out very cool. You may wonder why obsess about the language. Unless we strictly enforce the “no Japanese” rule, the kids will speak to the teachers in English, but will naturally speak to their friends in Japanese. And once they create these relationships in Japanese, it will be almost impossible to bend them into English. I know, because when I started SSU!, not wanting to introduce “language negativity,” I never told them “no Japanese.” I just assumed the kids would organically begin switching over to English as they got better in the language. Didn’t happen.

Early on in Year Two, we initiated the No Japanese rule and that has been in place ever since. It took me the following two years to wrest the group into an only English environment. I won’t go into all of my methods, though a couple involved private sessions at “Nancy’s House” (everyone is desperate to come to our house for some reason) and well-placed money rewards. No shame here. It worked.

You may have noticed recurring photos of my more photogenic students at SSU!. The boy grinning impishly out of the lead photo is Ibuki. He came to us at 1 and 7 months and is now 6 years old. He has grown up in our schoolhouse, and is one strong little boy. And passionate as well. But I don’t need to tell you that, you can see it in his face.

I take very seriously the responsibility of growing little human beings. And believe deeply that we are planting seeds in these children that will flourish for many years to come. It is heart breaking when children leave the fold, but I know we’ve touched their lives, so feel comfort in that. And even now I get visits from ex-English conversation students from the early years when “the school,” called “Nancy’s English Club,” was merely a classroom in our home. They often report that they’ve continued with English, or perhaps have spent time living abroad, and it is warming to know that I made a lasting impression in their lives.

And that feeling makes it all worthwhile. No one gets rich teaching kids and certainly by the standards of fellow Stanford graduates, I wouldn’t call my little school a success. But I can’t imagine being the CEO someone predicted I would become back in the days at Stanford, affectionately know as “the Farm.”

I grew up in an oiled redwood house that shimmered iridescent silver in the rain.  The house was designed by William Hemple, an architect who had studied in Japan.  He built the house in a square around a screened over courtyard with rice paper plants growing in the corner and glass doors surrounding.  We had a Japanese garden with a slatted fence spanning our dining room and kitchen and the floors were cork.  The furniture was minimalistic Danish modern from House of Today in Palo Alto.  It was the ‘50’s.

As I write about my life here in Japan I think a lot about how the House is the center of our life and I also think about that Japanese-influenced oiled redwood house with the rice paper plants and sliding glass doors that planted a seed in me that grew and eventually brought me to Japan.

But what does this have to do with making Japanese paper anyhow?

Not much really, though I always did think our rice paper plant actually was used for making what we foolish Americans erroneously call "rice paper." In fact, handmade paper is most appropriately called washi  (literally Japanese paper) and has a gorgeous pulpy, tactile texture that takes dyes beautifully. Washi is my new favorite present to bring to the U.S., if I can just figure out a way not to smash it in transit.

 

And here’s how we made washi with the kids…

 

The teacher sets a rattan mold on top of a wooden frame.

With her help, the child dips the mold into the pulpy water.

With her help, the child dips the mold into the pulpy water.

With her help, the child dips the mold into the pulpy water

With back and forth motions, the child swishes the frame to catch the pulp. It's harder than it looks (we adults didn't fare so well).

   

Once the rattan mold has accumulated enough paper pulp, the teacher releases it from the frame.

With her help, the child dips the mold into the pulpy water

The Teacher gently lifts the pulp-coated rattan mat from the frame...

 

And brings it gingerly to the pile of other paper the kids have made (each marked with a piece of washi marked with their name).

With her help, the child dips the mold into the pulpy water

She expertly lays the rattan mat squarely on the pile...

With her help, the child dips the mold into the pulpy water

And lifts the mat from the pulp, leaving the wet "sheet" behind on the pile of other just-made paper.

 

Et voilà! The stack of freshly made paper dries on a rack, and magically separates when fully dried.

The Japanese Flea Market

Twenty years ago some foreign wife friends coerced me into helping raise money by selling odds and ends at a flea market in Omiya, a sprawling suburb of Tokyo.  The 20-foot-high banner spanning the blocked off shopping street splashed “Free Market” across the white cloth in red letters.

Hmmm…though I suppose it really should have been a "free" market, for all the junk that people were selling that day. 

Ten years later, we began a year long house renovation project with the intention of moving out of the house we had built, to move into Tadaaki’s parents’ 70-year-old farmhouse.  And so began a year of designing, scrubbing, and scavenging for old tansu (chests) and shoji (wood-framed paper and glass doors).  And no they don’t use rice paper, the paper is called washi and literally means Japanese paper (nothing to do with rice).  For several years, I had been hearing about a monthly flea market on the gateball ground next to the Japan Agriculture vegetable stand in our town.  I didn’t think much of it, having already experienced that dubious “free market” in Omiya, but should not have been so quick to dismiss.

When Tadaaki started coming home from our local flea market with very cool unusual pieces, I saw immediately I had misjudged.  From that time on, I have haunted the market winding my way through the rows on that dusty ground and have become pals with some of the sellers.  And no matter what I say, they still think I’m a dealer.  Maybe because I buy wisely, and in volume.  It’s hard to pass up an intricately woven basket for ¥1000 ($9) that probably took someone several painstaking days to craft 50 years ago.  Heartbreaking, really when you think how undervalued that basket has become.  But then, I tend to buy big things:  baskets, mixing bowls and wooden buckets; often affordable because Japanese today have little storage and houses are no longer designed for large pieces.  Farmhouses have cavernous closets with few shelves, so oversized nesting baskets and wooden boxes were used to store clothes or papers.  Sometimes the traditional storage style in our farmhouse is inconvenient, but at least we have space for my “finds.”

It’s mostly the wealthy Tokyoites or other antique dealers who see the value in much of what is being sold at our local flea market.  Even in our old neighborhood, the typical modern couple will tear down their parents’ (or grandparents’) farmhouse and build a monstrous pre-fab house on the lot.  While many Japanese may see the intrinsic beauty in old things, those objects have become far removed from their lives.  Old is cool, just not in their house.  Old is dirty.

But I don’t mind a little dirt and for me, old has aji (literally “taste”).  Also we have three sons, and I know if I don’t buy now, there will be nothing left to buy.  I spent a summer antiquing with my mother in Vermont and New Hampshire while she was a professor at Dartmouth.  Under tents set out in fields, we’d bid on the only ratty pieces we could afford.  It was fun, but in a way depressing to see how little remained from our short American history.

In Japan, the dealers buy up whole kura (storage houses) from farming or merchant families, sight unseen.  The older generation (as well as the younger), see no inherent value in the “junk” stored from the past and are happy to unload the stuff and have someone to haul it away.  So, when I haggle, I have that in mind.  Also, I look for unusual or well-crafted wooden boxes, ceramic serving bowls (often cracked), lacquer miso soup bowls with lids (sometimes hand carved with shell inlay) and baskets.  Glorious, glorious baskets.  And I also buy tansu (Japanese chests of drawers)—though less now that one of our old chicken coops is storing about twenty tansu scavenged from old houses due to be demolished.

In the end though, the dealers at our flea/antique market are not getting rich, so there is a limit on how much I try to get the price down.  And it’s all about the relationships we form.  I trust their pricing and they know I value the things I buy because I have an eye for humble artistry over flash.

I’ve got my favorite guys at the flea market, though they’re not always there.  Some have given up, while others hang in there despite encroaching age and shaky health, but their stuff seems to deteriorate along with their health.  My favorite vendor has a dyed black comb-over, and stutters when he speaks.  And he always puts together a great package for me.  Of course I come away with way more than I intended to buy, but the prices he offers me are too good to pass up.  And he is sweetly sincere.   Last time I bought an alligator purse for $25 dollars and an antique round wall clock for $45.  I still haven’t figured out where I’ll put the clock or carry the purse, but they were great buys.

f someone is selling swords, I know his wares are too rich for my blood. There 

But if someone is selling swords, I know his wares are too rich for my blood.  There is a crotchety old guy with swords and beautifully crafted trinkets such as inro.  When I ask him the price, he deadpans, “takai” (it’s expensive), and says no more.  Vendors who deal in katana (Japanese swords) tend to be dismissive of gaijin and scruffy people (like me) who don’t have the prerequisite bulging wad of cash in their wallet.  And I can spot those customers a mile off, either their skin is well-inked (semi-yakuza) or they’ve got slicked back hair and are sporting sunglasses and golf clothes. 

he flea market in our little town of 15,000 has grown from once a month to a weekly affair, and now has spre

The flea market in our little town of 15,000 has grown from once a month to a weekly affair, and now has spre

The flea market in our little town of 15,000 has grown from once a month to a weekly affair, and now has spread out to an adjacent parking lot.  I stumbled upon that annex the last Sunday in May.  A wicker armchair caught my eye, but before I could scuttle away, the adept seller had me in his clutches.  And yes, I did buy it, though I didn’t need it.  It was hand woven and just too gorgeous to pass up (though probably not Japanese).  I’m not sure why our little area has become a magnet for old things (and junk), but the gateball ground is mobbed on the 1^st and 3^rd Sundays of the month (the main markets) and new vendors seem to be pop up each time I go.

 

 

AAnd on that last Sunday in May, I ran into dear friend a

And on that last Sunday in May, I ran into dear friend and editor, Kim Schuefftan, who edited and ghostwrote most of the seminal cookbooks that came out of Kodansha International in the ‘80’s.  Kim has been in Japan since 1963 and loves Japanese old things as much as I.  He knows a lot more than me, though I introduced him to our flea market, to which he often drives 40 minutes each way.  He knows a good thing when he finds one.  And we foreigners hold one advantage over Japanese buyers, in that we can often discern intrinsic beauty in mundane objects that Japanese may well overlook.  

Local vegetable stands are about the closest thing we come to farmers’ markets in Japan.  And since our family produces a lot of our food, we don’t really buy much food at the vegetable stand, so the flea market has become the place I create connections with “purveyors” and where I run into Japanese and foreign friends alike.  I always missed that while living here, and thought nostalgically about living in Menlo Park, perhaps running into old friends from childhood or Stanford at Draeger’s.  But now, with Facebook and the blog, I “run into them” anyway, so suppose I have the best of both worlds.

 

Kamikawa Flea Market Finds:   Edo period tray, lidded wooden baskets for sweets, lacquered miso soup bowl lids.   Fontvielle Marché (Les Baux):  antique linen napkin

                                                                Photo by Kenji Miura 

Ohagi:  Wash 500 cc glutinous rice (mochi gome) until water runs clear. Place rice in rice cooker receptacle. Add 500 cc (2 cups) minus 3 Tbsps filtered or spring water and let stand overnight. Cook in rice cooker on okowa (おこわ)setting. Or, wrap in thin muslin gauze or two layers of cheesecloth, place in steamer, and steam over furiously boiling water for one hour.

Transfer cooked rice to a large mixing bowl and mash with a large wooden pestle until the rice grains begin to adhere into a sticky mass. There will still be visible grains. Let cool 20 minutes for easier handling.

Set a small bowl of cold water by your side. Dip your fingers in the water to keep the rice from sticking to your hands. Shape rice into 10-cm (4-inch) by 5-cm (2-inch) oblongs.

Sesame: Toast 4 Tbsps sesame seeds in a dry pan over medium heat just until they pop. Grind roughly with mortar and pestle, add 1 Tbsp sugar and ¼ tsp salt and mix. Pour sesame mixture into a small plate and roll rice oblongs to coat. (substitute: walnuts or pecans)

Soybean powder (kinako): To 4 Tbsps kinako, mix in 1 Tbsp sugar and ¼ tsp salt. Follow above procedure for rolling ohagi.

Azuki Bean Paste (anko): Measure 250 cc (1 cup) azuki beans into a medium-sized pot fill pot to top with cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat, remove from flame and let sit one hour. Drain, return beans to pot, and fill with cold water to about 4 cm (2 inches) above beans. This is known as “surprise water” (bikkuri mizu); it shocks the beans and softens them. Simmer until beans just get soft. Stir in 50 grams (¼ cup) sugar and ¼ tsp salt and continue cooking and until beans start to fall apart. Mash roughly. The paste should be still about the consistency of mashed potatoes, but still chunky. Smooth anko around the rice oblongs instead of rolling in sesame or kinako.

Pounding Mochi

“Gacha-gacha-gacha,” our monstrously heavy, and equally ancient front door rattles on its metal track, quickly followed by the whoosh of the wood and glass shoji inner front door.  From the energy burst of the opening and the splash of hand washing, I know it’s Tadaaki, coming in for breakfast after collecting the early morning eggs.  As he bangs brass against iron, I hear him hefting the antique stockpot onto our stove.  He sparks the flame and the soft hum of the hood fan revs up.  Christmas has come and gone, and now shogatsu (Japanese New Year) has arrived.   I’m glad it’s Tadaaki’s turn to be in charge because I have no more energy left and burrow deeper into my down covers staving off the inevitable.

Shogatsu is traditionally a family time, though that has been waning in recent years as families disperse to far cities.  But our family still follows most of the traditional practices. 

Each year on the 29^th of December, Tadaaki washes the organic glutinous rice called mochi gome that we will pound the next day.  This year Tadaaki plans to pound eight batches of mochi, so has eight pails of rice to wash and soak.  Each pail holds three kilos of rice that he has bought from our grower friend, Suka-san.  A couple years ago, Tadaaki discovered an antique rice washer upstairs in my collection of flea market finds and was excited to put it to use.  The guy I bought it from said it was an ice cream maker. I doubted that, but was attracted by the fine craftsmanship of the old wooden bucket and the low price (sad but typical).  Tadaaki soaks the rice overnight and the next morning we kick off shogatsu with a half-day of mochi making (mochi tsuki).

 Every year, we do mochi tsuki outside in the garden and by some stroke of luck, that day almost always dawns sunny.  Tadaaki wraps a pail of soaked mochi gome in a muslin cloth, puts the muslin bundle into a bamboo-steaming basket with a lid, and places it in an iron pot full of boiling water set over a wood burning fire. The glutinous rice steams for about an hour, then is plucked out of the steamer and dumped into a one meter “square,” hollowed out tree stump (usu) that Tadaaki has soaked over night.  Tadaaki’s mother prepares a bucket of cold water next to the usu for dipping in the mallet or hands before touching the sticky rice.  First Tadaaki circles the usu, smashing the rice grains with an oversized wooden mallet.  Then he wields the mallet high above his head and pounds the mass with a series of distinctively satisfying “thumps.”  The untutored tend toward squelchy, weak burps as their mallet lands on the rice.  (They probably don’t reach far enough over their head to really get the necessary leverage.)  One person pounds and another person dips his hand in the cold water, then folds the rice "dough" over itself in one quick movement in between the mallet contacting with the rice (almost like kneading bread). We invite a dozen or so friends and everyone gets a turn at pounding the mochi.  In the past, Tadaaki and his brothers worked up a sweat, but now that the kids are getting bigger, and friends have gotten more skillful, so the mallet gets passed around and mochi tsuki is truly a community event.  

 As soon as each batch of mochi is pounded, we must work quickly before it cools to an unpliable mass.  We smooth the hot mochi into half moon-shaped dumplings called kagami mochi that will be stacked up and offered to the house gods.  Tadaaki continues to pinch off misshapen globs of mochi, as we flatten them into rough circles and stretch them around a ball of anko (simmered organic azuki beans smashed with organic sugar and a little sea salt). As more batches of mochi are pounded out, I take my turn at rolling the mochi into a flat rectangle slab.  The mochi is much less temperamental than piecrust and just needs a firm, even hand.  Tadaaki’s mother used to roll the mochi out on the hall floor that opens up to the garden but in recent years Tadaaki drags out Christopher’s ping-pong table for the operation.  Once the mochi is rolled out and well powdered with potato starch, Tadaaki flips the several centimeter thick rectangle slabs onto a wooden board to dry for a couple days before cutting. 

 During the holidays we have a lot of food.  A lot.  I deal with the Christmas food, but Tadaaki’s in charge of the Japanese New Year stuff.  And every year the mochi squares start to mold before they get stuck in the freezer.  Last year, Tadaaki had (what he thought was) the brilliant idea of smoothing the hot mochi into heavy-duty plastic pickle bags to deter the mold that tends to form a few days after the mochi is fully dried. I tried to dissuade him, but he would not be budged.  Air-drying creates a delicate semi-dried crust, silky smooth from the potato starch and cool to the touch.  The gooey plastic-wrapped version just couldn’t compare.  The mochi inside the blue-lettered (unattractive) bags looked unappetizing (and was).  And in the end, Tadaaki’s “innovative” method didn’t really solve the problem of storing the mochi.

We ended up with a huge slab of mochi not cut up (so unusable) and impossible to put in the freezer (too unwieldy) and this huge slab of mochi sat in the larder (eventually molding).  I tried to reason with my very stubborn husband, but he was puffed up like a little boy about his clever new method.  Last year, I let him run with it, despite finally having to throw out the mochi that sat in the larder for a couple months.  But at the end of shogatsu this year, I enlisted Christopher’s support.  The plastic-encased mochi made me gag and I had had enough.  The air-drying process is essential to create a wicked surface against which the pounded rice will push off and puff up when broiled.  Without that surface, the broiled mochi dipped in soy sauce, then wrapped in nori is unpleasantly gummy (and Christopher agreed).  I think we’re going back to the rolling and air-drying next year.  Small victories.  Life is all about those small victories.

 At lunchtime Tadaaki’s brings out the steaming pot of kenchinjiru.  We ladle the soup out into handmade pottery bowls and Tadaaki pops a couple hot globs of mochi into each.  The mochi melts to a warm, gooey (but tasty) mass.  Definitely an aquired texture.

 Tadaaki squeezes off more freshly pounded mochi mounds into the grated purple daikon he is growing this year.  Purple.  I’ve never seen this variety and am captivated by the vibrant lavender against my antique gray pottery bowl.  Colors are one of the things I love best about Japan.  Sometimes vibrant, sometimes earthy, but always rich in hue and nuanced in texture.  I drizzle organic soy sauce over the daikon before greedily scooping a large spoonful or two onto my plate.  But every year, it is the natto mochi I crave.  Organic fermented soybeans I have aerated vigorously with chopsticks to promote the characteristic threads of natto “slime,” seasoned with a hot mustard paste and organic soy sauce.  The blandly, subtle hot mochi contrasts nicely with the fermented natto, making it slightly addicting (for natto aficionados).

 This year some of my oldest friends have come and we fall easily back on familiar topics.  I uncork the stopper of Harigaya-san’s homemade lager and pour a glass.  Life couldn’t get any better and this is one of my favorites days of the year:  no responsibility, the warm winter sun and talking leisurely with friends.  Sometimes it’s nice not to be in charge.