Life In Japan: A rose is a rose is an onion . . .

I was trying the other day to imagine what went through my mind when I was 25. It’s both a difficult and amusing exercise.

It requires erasing a lot of experience, history, knowledge, wisdom, joy and pain — maybe ‘ignoring’ is a better term — and seeing what sparse caricature of reality is left to assemble into a marginally coherent view of the world, recognizing that “hindsight” is still at play here, sabotaging the mechanics of memory.

It also requires recalling — painful and even embarrassing as it might be — what dreams and expectations I entertained at the time, as immature and undeveloped as I was.

I can’t say I came up with anything very interesting or startling. One thing I can assert with absolute certainty . . .

I never imagined I would at this stage in my life be living in Japan growing onions in my modest garden!

Not that I have anything against onions. On the contrary, onions are spectacular! They have a lot of symmetry and are about as essential as it gets in the kitchen.

It’s just that at 25 I was still living in my home state of Michigan. And I was more pre-occupied with exhaust fumes than fertile soil or keeping monkeys from stealing me blind. True, I was no longer in Detroit. And 25-years-of-age was post-university. But avoiding the exhaust fumes of pompous college professors had replaced avoiding the exhaust fumes of automobiles and factories.

Anyway here I am. And I’m a “proud papa”! Just look at this fine specimen . . .

Yes, a lot has happened over the many years, and a lot has changed. So my life is not just about vegetables. I write novels and unique — some would say eccentric — creative non-fiction books. More importantly, much of my focus these days is on political activism, specifically anti-war activism. You can get the flavor of my efforts HERE and HERE.

Oh . . . one last thing. The inspiration for the title of this article was Gertrude Stein. Here is the story from Wikipedia: “The sentence ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’ was written by Gertrude Stein as part of the 1913 poem Sacred Emily, which appeared in the 1922 book Geography and Plays.” As if you didn’t already know that.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

Life In Japan: A rose is a rose is an onion . . . | John Rachel

Life In Japan: Hyogo Prefecture, Breadbasket of Asia | John Rachel

Without wanting to sound like a broken record, living in an agricultural region — and this could be anywhere in the world — is still an adventure for me, with fresh epiphanies and surprises a regular occurrence. Watching the cycle of plant, grow, harvest puts life on a unique timeline. I love it!

We live in the middle of farm fields. Most of what is being grown appears to be rice and soybeans, which are called kuromame [ 黒豆 ] i.e. black beans. Tambasasayama is famous across Japan for its black beans and the streets are packed with tourists at harvest time.

Little did I know that Hyogo Prefecture — the equivalent to a state or province — is among the top producers in a host of other agricultural products. As you can see from the mapping above, the abundance is astonishing. For the record, these are at the top of the list for all of Japan:

#1 Crab 
#1 Black Soybeans 
#1 Sake Rice
#1 Shirasu, Ikanago
#2 Onions 
#2 Red Beans 
#2 Seaweed Paper
#2 Octopus

Why am I telling you this?

Darn good question!

Maybe a better question is . . .

Why are you reading this?

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

Life In Japan: Hyogo Prefecture, Breadbasket of Asia | John Rachel

Life In Japan: Annual Neighborhood Barbecue

Notice something about the barbecue in the photo?

There are two things. 

Typically in the U.S. barbecuing is open flame, either over wood, charcoal, or with more sophisticated high-tech grills, over gas.  In Japan, it can be any of those, but just as often barbecuing is done with a hot plate, as shown.  Conveniently, they have hot plates for indoor barbecuing, both at home and at restaurants. 

We own a high-temperature electric griddle so we can barbecue in the middle of winter or during a typhoon without filling the house with smoke or being asphyxiated.

Secondly, I'm used to seeing mounds of meat and only meat.  Yes, they also barbecue mounds of meat here: Unbelievably delicious beef, pork and sausages, though rarely hamburgers and hot dogs.  But the Japanese also love to barbecue just about anything else that can be barbecued!  The volunteer chef above is "barbecuing" -- actually stir-frying -- noodles with cabbage.  Later, he removed the plate and open-grilled the entire range of items for the day's feast.  Corn, squash, onions, eggplant, potatoes, different varieties of mushrooms, garlic cloves, squid.

It seemed odd to me when I first arrived.  Now it makes total sense.  Barbecued vegetables are fantastic!  And don't get me started about squid.  Squid is one of those things I thought was completely weird before I moved here.  Squid and octopus.  Now I'm totally addicted.
We have a village barbecue at our community center every year in the middle of July.  The neighborhood organization pulls out all the stops.  A splendid time is had by all!

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Annual Neighborhood Barbecue