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.

After the Quake

Photo: Tokyo Insider

[originally published on The Rambling Epicure, April 25 as From Tokyo: Quirk of Fate After the Quake]

 

Just moments before the Great East Japan Earthquake began to shake I was thinking about food.

While making my way towards Tokyo Station to catch the bullet train back to my local area 100 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, I was toying with dropping by my regular sushi shop near Tokyo Station for a palate cleanser (to chase away a disappointing sushi lunch earlier). Though really, I was wishing I could stay in town for dinner. Alas, I knew this would not sit well with husband Tadaaki, as I had just gotten back a couple days earlier from a quick trip to the U.S. And I had been gone way too much this last year.

Nonetheless, the idea took hold.

That morning I had sat in on a brain storming session exploring logistics of bringing the next edition of Cook It Raw to Japan. As the talk flowed around me, my nascent desire to “experience” Yoshihiro Narisawa’s provocative Japanese influenced French “food” swelled into an obsessive urge to eat at his Minami Aoyama restaurant, Les Créations de Narisawa that night. Impractical, crazy, costly…impossible. Or so I thought.

When the ground of the massive station building where I stood stopped rippling and the initial terror had passed, the other passengers and I all waited quietly with backs leaning against the station walls. All eyes were fixed on our cell phones in hand, trying unsuccessfully to get a signal. No one said a word.

I emailed my 14-year-old son Matthew, home sick from school that day, and got a return email immediately. The house and family were fine.

At that point I still thought the trains would be running again. The JR announcements were telling us there had been a “big earthquake,” and to wait as they checked the train lines, so I dutifully waited for 45 minutes before realizing it was pointless. And so I made my way through underground walkways to Tokyo Station and began to realize the enormity of what had just happened.

Student groups trapped on their way through Tokyo for the annual School Trip were seated on the floor as teachers gave instructions. The bullet train would not be running that day (or the next).

My first thought was getting a hotel (and that I could stay for dinner). I had already squandered a crucial hour waiting for the trains to run, so the streets had swollen with commuters by the time I surfaced outside of Tokyo Station. I only knew of a few hotels and was not sure which side of the station they were located. Tokyo Station is a massive behemoth spanning multiple city blocks. When I finally got my bearings, it was getting on towards 5pm, already 2 hours after the earthquake. The hotels were full, so I lined up for the payphone to call Les Créations de Narisawa. My iPhone battery was dying, I was getting cold, and I knew I needed to get to a safe haven to recoup my energy before the night ahead of me. I needed food and I needed good food.

The minutes slipped quickly away and the hour hand of my watch was edging toward six. I glanced over at the hoards waiting for taxis and optimistically told the restaurant I would try to get there by 7:30, but gave them my email for contact.

I now had a destination and nothing would deter me from getting there. Nothing.

The line for taxis looked insanely long and seemed to feed in from different directions. I dithered. I stood in line for a while, still unable to commit: wait it out or find another way. I tried to gauge how long it would take by talking to others around me in line—I’m not sure what we were thinking. We somehow believed that if we stood there long enough, the taxi would take us where we wanted to go. But what exactly was, “long enough?” One hour…five?

The alternative was unthinkable. Walk.

But I didn’t have all night to passively wait. I had less than 2 hours to get to my asylum away from the massive surge of humanity that had filled the sidewalks and streets. I knew I could handle a night on the floor of Tokyo Station, but desperately needed something to ground me in the chaos. And the only thing that does that for me is a quiet room and thoughtful food.

So I set off walking. Power walking, that is.

Thanks to a fellow “traveler” met early on in my trek, I got to Minami Aoyama in about an hour and a half. We stopped one time on a pedestrian bridge over Aoyama Dori (a main thoroughfare). The vast sea of lights before us was from the cars that barely inched forward. No taxis were getting through that night. Walking had been a good decision.

Photo: Christian Science Monitor

A flute of champagne in hand, my iPhone charging, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. I was “home.”

For the next two hours, a surreal dinner like I had never had before unfolded. It almost seems obscene in retrospect: tree bark, tree sap…bread baked before my eyes in a small stone capsule. Unusual and whimsical morsels from land and sea played together on the equally fanciful “plates.” I was the only customer that night. Perhaps I was the only one crazy enough to take refuge in such a place. Shut off from the outside world, none of us in that hushed room of Les Créations de Narisawa really knew or understood the gravity of the earthquake and all the horror and devastation it had brought. Nor had any of us imagined the unthinkable happening as it has happened at Fukushima Daiichi.

That night at Les Créations de Narisawa, I was caught in a soft little bubble, coddled by the staff. All of us unaware of what awaited us when the bubble burst.

At 10 o’clock, I stepped back out into the brisk night and started my return voyage. Long (useless) waits for trains, a night spent shivering on the marble floor of Tokyo Station, and more endless lines later, I finally got home late the following day. And for now we are safe, though 215 kilometers does not seem far enough from Fukushima Daiichi. But hundreds of thousands of Japanese are still in shelters and many will not be able to go home for many years to come.

And in the aftermath, we try to pick up our lives. I am planting seeds for the summer and looking towards the future. I am trying to organize food for a shelter in our prefecture and to offer a family the vacant teacher apartment at our school, but the wheels grind slowly here and accepting help from outside sources means someone has to manage that. There seems to be an absence of organization to deal with donations and the shelter contacts prefer money or instant ramen over real food like a big pot of stew from farm chickens and local (non-irradiated) vegetables. But that’s Japan, it’s all about the face to face meeting, not phone arrangements. I suppose a road trip is in order.

 

Earthquake in Japan: Facebook Notes

Earthquake Aftermath: Posted on Facebook, March 13

As I sit in my comfy bed, drinking my coffee, and read about the deaths and destruction from the earthquake and resulting tsunami, my little ordeal just seems so insignificant.

 A spur of the moment meeting time change brought me to Tokyo Friday morning and that is why I was standing on the train platform in the Otemachi subway building when the earthquake hit. The terror, the panic, and then the resulting calm was out of this world bizarre. The only contact I could make was a few texts from my iPhone to my son Christopher in the U.S.. I never received his return texts.

I looked for a hotel right away, but it wasn't soon enough. Everything took an inordinately long time--there were so many people that seemed to ooze up to the streets after the trains came to a halt. That night in Tokyo was kind of like an out of body experience. Waiting 45 minutes to use the phone. Waiting 45 minutes (uselessly) for a taxi. Power walking to Minami Aoyama to get warm, eat dinner and recharge phone and self. Waiting 45 minutes (uselessly) for subway back to Tokyo, took the Ginza line no problem. No place to sleep, so headed for the Bullet Train waiting area and laid down on the floor with a magazine under me. Someone gave me a newspaper, so that helped. The saga goes on, but is nothing compared to what the Sendai or Miyagi people went through.

I got in line to catch the first train in the morning, at 7:45, and that was only the beginning of a long day spent in line waiting for trains that never came. No information. No trains. Finally at a reasonable distance from my area, I got off the last train in disgust when they announced they were changing drivers. Oops, no they had no driver. Exiting the train station, the guy told me I could have a refund since the bullet train wasn't running, I took a look at the line and decided to skip it. Instead, jumped in a taxi to take me to my car waiting at the bullet train station where I had parked it Friday morning. Warm, alone and off my feet, it was 50 well spent dollars.

I may write more, but I may not. For now that's what I've got. Just one little person caught up in that massive sway of humanity that results when you've got millions of people trapped in a city with little or no trains moving. It could have been a lot worse. We could have been in Sendai, Miyagi, or Fukushima. And worse could be coming. I'm just reading the news now, so you all probably know more than me, but it looks like we could have a meltdown at the nuclear power plant in Fukujima. More devastation and the kind that lasts for generation. This is all so unthinkable.

 

Evacuations advised...but: Posted on Facebook, March 17

 It's hard to write as I am worrying and worrying about my decision to stay here as the reports worsen. 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. We should make our way to Narita airport with our passports in hand and minimal luggage. There we sign papers agreeing to reimburse the American govt for the price of a basic one way ticket to somewhere in Asia and we wait to get on a flight. Once we arrive at this as yet unknown Asian destination, we are on our own.

But as we approach 6pm here, Matthew is not even home from school and he refuses to carry his cell phone because it is against the rules. Who is this guy? Doesn't sound like any son of mine...oh right, he's Tadaaki's son, too.

I'm less worried about the crowds and delays going through Tokyo to get to the airport because (Japanese) Tokyoites are staying inside and I hear the streets are fairly empty. But foreigners and some Japanese are leaving in droves to go south or fly home. I still fear the chaos and feel safe in our house, despite that the wind whistles through cracks and small gaps in numerous spots. Airtight, we are not. But we do have well water pumped into the house in the cold water faucet and we have enough food inside the house for months....and lots of futons and warm covers, but no more kerosene for the heater.

Realistically, I don't think it's a question of if there will be a meltdown, just when. We're 225 km or 140 miles SW from Fukushima Daiichi. But I'm afraid of becoming more exposed by venturing out on the road to Narita (100 km from Daiichi, in fact). So for now we'll stay. And (selfishly) we'll hope for easterly winds to blow the nuclear cloud out to sea.

I hope I've made the right decision.

 

We are leaving: Posted on Facebook, March 18

This morning our 19-year-old son Christopher called me from Portland and was adamant that we leave. He would not let it go, so I told him to call his father. After their conversation, Tadaaki decided that I should take our two younger sons (14 and 16 years old) out of Japan. I was at my little Sunny-Side Up! Kindergarten finishing up the last day, having already postponed all end of year graduation programs due to the dire situation in Japan. I also cancelled the Spring Break language camp for next week.

I got home around 12:30 pm or so and Tadaaki rolled in a bit later. We discussed the situation and I decided to defer to his wishes. Almost relieved, but still not quite sure I was doing the right thing, I was lucky to find 3 seats on an ANA flight out of Narita tomorrow afternoon for only $1350 each. A couple days ago I had looked, found the same price for seats two days forward, but then 15 minutes later they had gone up $500 per ticket. Obviously, ANA is being nice...and generous considering the other gouging happening with airline tickets right now.

Matthew still is insisting he is not coming with us. He is making me crazy. The soft talking does not work. The tough love does not work. I really hoped Tadaaki could get through to him. Not sure that telling Matthew we might not be back for 10 years was the best tack to push him out the door. The poor guy feels guilt for leaving his friends and his country just when he is in a good space. I understand, but how can I leave one child behind. And how can he not understand this?

My good friend Yoshikai-san called today to say he was trying to find a way to get his 10-year-old son out of the country. Of course I offered to take him with us. By some miracle, Yoshikai-san was able to cut through some red tape to get his son Shunpei on our flight. Luckily he has come often to our house with his parents, and sometimes spends the night, so we are not strangers. His favorite Hachisu boy is Christopher, but he'll have to make do with Andrew and Matthew (if all goes well). 

I did not want to go, I don't worry for myself, but I was agonizing about the decision I had to make for the kids and their future. Unlike Tadaaki, I do not think that our area will become unlivable and can't quite understand how he has see-sawed to that position after being so blasé earlier this week (Wednesday was it?).

We'll be in Gilroy at my sister Pam's house and I booked a return flight to Japan on April 1. At least the decision has been made. Now we have to get to the airport in one piece (along with Matthew).

 

At the Airport: Posted on Facebook, March 19

Last night was fraught with high tension and strong emotions. Tadaaki and Matthew skipped dinner. Matthew went to sleep still dug deep into his stance of not leaving. I woke him up to kiss him goodnight and tell him I loved him. Don't know if it had any affect, but this morning at 5:30 he was resigned to leaving.Unfortunately, by 7:30 he had gone back to bed and still wasn't dressed. We needed to leave for the train at 8 am and there he still lay an inanimate object. Near hysteria I tried dragging him from the bed but gave up and went downstairs to make his rice balls for the plane.

Tadaaki came home and succeeded in getting Matthew downstairs dressed and guided/prodded/pushed him gently out the door and into the car.

Matthew is bitter and feels betrayed to the core, but I think I can live with that if it means not leaving him behind.

He has now finished a crappy bowl of airport ramen washed down with a bottle of Coke and is moving on to an equally crappy hot dog with a bottle of Ginger Ale. Guaranteed to make him sick on the plane. "That's what I want," he deadpans. Of course, to torture the evil mom.

Anyway, we will be on our way in about 3 hours. Andrew is sleepy, Shunpei in good spirits, and I am ready for my airplane sandwich, a baguette stuffed with our friend's celery and onion, tuna, and Tadaaki's eggs (hardboiled). And I think I really need a beer.

In the meantime, Tadaaki is very shaken and still expecting the worse. I have not had time to read any news for 24 hours so will do so after I eat. I cannot imagine our area would become uninhabitable. That was not at all the sense I was getting this last week as I stayed glued to the computer screen and madly scanned the Internet for updates.

 

We're Back Home...in Japan: Posted on Facebook, April 7

 It's after midnight here in Japan. And yes that means we are all back in the fray.

We left California on schedule April 1 despite my misgivings. Three weeks post-earthquake, I've lost the desire to fight as there is so much emotion and so many crises happening before our eyes. I suppose I should be a stonger mother and just say, "Hell no, you are not going back to Japan. You are staying in Gilroy (or Berkeley)"--so many generous family and friends offered their support. But somewhere between Tadaaki telling Matthew that we would all be gone for 10 years and that our hometown of Kamikawa would become a ghost town and then Tadaaki suddenly deciding to believe TEPCO was a bit more surrealistic than I care to deal with on a day to day basis. And I won't mention the horrific nightly dreams. Or the shouting as I woke up in the middle of the night. Or the sleep walking. I won't mention that because who the hell am I to complain. I have an intact house, and also many places to run to. I have options. Most of the people in Japan do not.

While in California,I tweeted US Ambassador of Japan, John Roos (a casual Stanford pal from Los Arcos Eating Club), that I could probably house some refugee children at SSU! I'm sure he has more than enough on his plate, so did not expect to hear back. Also I began to have second thoughts about taking care of extra kids. But I did not want to give up the idea of helping the evacuees, so emailed my friend Harigaya-san (mountain man, shishimai troupe, fascinating guy). Early days after the earthquake, Tadaaki had told me that Harigaya-san would take in refugees in his rambling mountain home. I knew he could help put me together with the people who are placing evacuees from Miyagi and Fukushima.

I rent two small side by side houses for the teachers at SSU! One went home to England and will not be back because of the radiation scares, so that house is open. I don't need (and can't really find) a new teacher right now, but don't want to give up such a great little spot as the houses are a set, so I'd suck it up and pay rent anyway for several months. That place could potentially house a couple small families.

SSU! has a large upstairs with two separate spacious rooms. Despite the English only restrictions while classes are in session, potentially a couple fairly good sized families could occupy those two rooms.

So, am I happy to be back? Not happy, but relieved to be back in my place and resigned to the fate of what happens. I cannot see any good outcome from the short or long term affects of radiation, despite what we hear. Recently I have been watching video news commentary from early on in the crisis. Funny how the moderate pro-nuclear scientists woefully underestimated what was on the horizon at Fukushima Daiichi. And ironic that the supposed "crackpot" anti-nuclear scientists often were dead on right in their projections.

So yes, I'm still worried. And yes, I wish my children were in the U.S.. And yes, we will do whatever we can to protect the little SSU! children we are caring for in these turbulent days.

In Saitama, mostly people do not talk about the threats of radiation. Only one mother really opened up to me via email that she is seriously worried about the lack of information from the government and TEPCO. Maybe that is because she is a professor, I don't know. A couple other mothers are pissed off because I left Japan during Spring Break. I abandoned my responsibility as a school director...during vacation? Well, I guess they have to have someone to be angry with since it doesn't help to rail against TEPCO or the government. Always easier when you have a real person to direct your bad feelings.

I'm picking up life here. First day of school tomorrow. I've discovered (and embraced) Google Translate in a big way during this time. I also spent an hour or more weeding my heirloom lettuce and cilantro in the field today (hold overs from a too late autumn planting). I feel good for having gotten my fingers dirt encrusted, scrabbllng weeds under the unseasonally warm early spring sun. Only one half row to go on the lettuces. Peas, garlic, and chives next. The dirt is dry, but I found myself not wishing for rain (and for the potential radiation it would bring). We have a long road ahead but it could be worse. We could be in a shelter, no home, no livelihood, no family.

 

 

Making Marmalade

Each winter we have stacks of fruit boxes teetering precariously in the garage that I try to ignore until finally cannot. An 84-year-old organic grower friend sends us boxes and boxes of Japanese citrus such as buntan, a native grapefruit that yields hauntingly tantalizing zest; or natsumikan a sour, yet bright lemony-flavored tangerine; as well as small pale lemons with flowery smelling skin and intensely juicy oranges. I know I should be making marmalade, yet somehow I put it off each day. December is too busy with Christmas preparations (cookies, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day) that segue into Japanese New Year preparations (mochi making in the garden and New Year’s Eve dinner). And February we are usually in California. So that leaves a small window in January that sometimes slips away if I let it.

Now that the boys are in school, the February trip is off the books, so in January, I went to Food Blogger Camp in Cancun and Patricia Wells’ Truffle Class in Provence instead. This year the boxes had a new home in the old bathhouse outside my kitchen. The longer you wait the tougher the skins get on citrus fruit unless you wrap them individually in newspaper. And we all know that wasn’t going to happen. Also there is the inevitable powdery blue-green mold that develops. The guilty truth is that some years we end up with boxes of moldy citrus. That is the reality.

About 13 years ago, Tadaaki found an organic citrus grower and I started making marmalade from Susan Herrmann Loomis’ French Farmhouse Cookbook. At first we ordered the fruit through a natural farming group, but as the years went on, we began calling the grower directly. And she would call us back to check how we liked it. “Mama!” she would boom at the other end of the receiver…not my favorite name, but I gave up correcting her. In late 2001 we moved into my parents-in-law’s farmhouse that we had renovated. And I remember fielding calls from Mochizuki-san during Christmas dinners. I stood in the fax closet so that I could hear better, and didn’t have the heart to tell her we had guests. Her husband was in the end stages of a battle with cancer and she was lonely.

So we talked. And talked. And so the relationship grew. Eventually her family and our family met up half way in Atami for the day. Later she came to visit us by train. We returned the visit by plane (and boat), bringing along my father and stepmother. Mochizuki-san lives on a remote island near Hiroshima. Her son and daughter-in-law live on the same property, but do not help with the citrus growing and there are only a few other growers on the island, mostly elderly. I am in awe of Mochizuki-san’s drive to keep growing, despite her increasing years, and that pushes me to somehow get the marmalade done.

I’ve often had help cutting up the fruit. For a price of course. And sometimes I asked my ex-babysitter to help with the canning. But these last few years I’ve left the marmalade project totally in the hands of a couple assistants from Sunny-Side Up!, my little immersion English school. I had lost heart.

Last year when I came back from Food Blogger Camp, my marmalade was waiting on the counter, as if magically prepared by the kitchen fairies. I felt guilty reading David Lebovitz’s post on tracking down (expensive) citrus in Paris and the painstaking process of cutting up fruit for his marmalade. I wanted to write about my marmalade saga, but how could I?

The truth is, I had begun to hate my marmalade. I no longer enjoyed the dark intensity of the marmalade I had developed and longed for a brighter, fresher taste. I tried making the Japanese style of marmalade, which yields a thinner, wetter jam. It was tasty at first, but the back bite of intense citrus oil got tiring and the marmalade didn’t keep well. The marmalade made by my assistants was good, but somehow not right. It wasn’t mine.

I had lunch at Chez Panisse with some friends and my sister on my way home from Mexico in January. Elise slipped me a jar of Rosemary-Infused Meyer Lemon Marmalade made from her tree that had fallen. And it tasted like Elise…bright, subtle, and tart. But more than that, Elise’s handiwork inspired me to push myself to take back my marmalade operation.

And so I did. (With a little help.)

I roped my sometime SSU! assistant, Chizuru into helping (for a price) and together we cut up 12 kilos of citrus (native Japanese grapefruit, sour tangerines, navel oranges, and lemons), to which I added 4 liters of fresh squeezed juice and 16 liters of water before soaking them overnight. The next day, I dumped in 16 kilos of organic sugar and put the mixture on to boil for a couple hours while I ran out to the home center to buy new jars. No time to fuss with sterilizing (leaving that evening for France), I jarred them up as is. Way back in the beginning of my marmalade making, I would actually sterilize and jar up in ever increasingly larger jars. Now I fill up some medium-sized jars and pour the rest of the marmalade in 2- or 4-liter oversized jars used for making sour plum-infused cordial.

 
Back from France, this time the marmalade left on my counter is my own. And this marmalade is the best I have ever made. I had enjoyed the peaceful cutting up ritual and I had not fought the process. And you can taste that.

Residual jetlag has me waking at 4 or 5, eventually jumping out of bed around 6 or 7 to rustle up some coffee and toast with marmalade. And it’s worth jumping out of bed early (just to jump back in with my laptop propped on top of the covers). Warm and cozy, I drink my morning Peets’ pouring out dollops from my thermos cup into my favorite Mashiko yaki coffee cup and nibble bites of my pain au levain, with unsalted Hokkaido butter and this year’s marmalade.

And each year I wonder if this will be the last year for Mochizuki-san to send us fruit.

 

Susan Herrmann Loomis’ Orange Marmalade: The first year I made this I halved the sugar. Big mistake. The sugar to liquid ratio was not enough to make a syrup. It was a big, soupy disaster. The next year, I kept the sugar as is, but also cut the water almost in half. That worked. Also I simplified the recipe, so here it is: Weigh out 3 kilos mixed varieties of organic citrus. Cut the fruit in half and squeeze out the juice. You should have about 1 liter. Cut the citrus skins into a small, even dice. Put cut citrus, juice, and 3 liters water in a large stock or jam pot. Soak overnight. The following day, add 4 kilos sugar and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir occasionally and boil for 1½ to 1¾ hours (increase cooking time if you multiply the recipe). Cook until you can see large bubbles and the mixture is thick and syrupy. Check to see if the marmalade has set by dribbling some of the syrup onto a small plate and putting in freezer for a couple minutes. Fill sterilized jars up the very top, top with marmalade; cap, and turn upside down immediately to cool. Done. Do not refrigerate, even once opened.

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.