-
Cassoulet
I made my first cassoulet yesterday. I didn’t get a photo when we sat down to eat it, but I snapped one while making it. Tokyo friends with good food sense came to visit and I had a freezer full of random meat, so I emptied the freezer in pursuit of a special dish for…
-
21 Huron Circle
I learned this week that my childhood home burned down in April 2022. It was a sad moment to take in and I am still feeling moody. Even though my parents moved away in 1989 while I was in college – over 35 years ago – 21 Huron Circle was an anchor of memories and…
-
Ants Climbing a Tree
I made this Chinese noodle dish for a party and want to save my version of the recipe so I can make it again. The key to the whole thing is finely chopping all of the ingredients so that the “ants” can climb the tree of the noodles. The flavor is spicy from the mustard…
-
Knowing Foreigners
I read an interesting article last week in the Japan Times reporting on a survey of Japanese people in rural areas regarding their (lack of) interactions with foreigners. I am pasting the whole thing here to be able to reference is again in a decade: A recent survey has shown Japanese people who reside outside…
-
Burning the banks
One of the many tasks done in Japanese rice fields is burning the edges of the paddies to reduce weed seeds and insects which in turn prevents larger pests from moving in and eating the rice when its planted. Some farms do their noyaki in the autumn after harvest and others do it in the…
-
Paths, old and new
The property around 555 is a jungle. I love it that way, yet I feel the need to tame it. I want a diversity of things growing, attracting insects, birds, and other animals but at the same time, I want to be able to enjoy the space around me without climbing through weeds. And the…
-
Fixing the holes
I am not a farmer, but today I did some pleasurable field work; I helped to fill in the holes formed by erosion in the irrigation system at Oyama Senmaida. There were six of us working today. My goal was to watch and learn and be as useful as possible. I was on “B Team”…
-
First snow at 555
Across the Bay, yesterday was a snowpocalypse, closing all highways heading west from the city, grounding flights, and delaying trains. But here we only had a lot of rain pouring down on us all day. Until evening when the temperature dropped and the snow began. First a dusting and then quickly accumulating to a nice…
-
Sayonara, Kaneya route.
Nitto Kotsu has announced one of the local bus routes in our area will be ending on March 31. The Kaneya line (marked in red) is finishing on March 31st. From April 1, you will no longer be able to take a bus all the way across the peninsula between the Tokyo Wan ferry terminal…
-
Dondo-yaki for Setsubun
February 3rd is Setsubun, the last day of winter in Japan. It’s commonly celebrated by throwing beans to scare away the ogres and demons, and by eating an overstuffed sushi roll while facing in the lucky direction for the coming year. 2024’s direction is East North East. But in Okugome village in Kimitsu, about a…
Archives