Finding the Good Life in Japan

Image Gallery Hadasu, a Japanese farming and fishing village near their home. WINIFRED BIRD

October is a good month on the Kii Peninsula of central Japan. The forest is full of wild chestnuts and mushrooms; the kitchen gardens overflow with persimmons, figs, fall eggplants and peppers; and the new rice is stored for winter. The still-generous sea provides squid, bonito and mackerel (although Japan faces the same issues of pollution and overfishing as the rest of the world). All told, this land I’ve made my home seems endlessly giving and welcoming.

I never thought I’d live in Japan. I grew up in San Francisco, dreaming of one day having my own farm somewhere on the West Coast. Several years of interning and working on farms across America convinced me that my dream could become a reality. But then I met my fiancé, Keita Hanai, who is Japanese, and plans changed.

I doubt Keita ever imagined he’d be living in rural Japan with an American farming enthusiast. He grew up on a huge agricultural commune in Japan, growing organic vegetables and rice, caring for cows and fixing farm equipment. But by the end of his 20s, corruption and conflict had soured communal life, and he left to study log building in Canada. That’s where we met. I was working for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms at an apple, pear and cherry orchard, and he was helping to build a log house at the same farm. We fell in love and a year later moved back to his home region of Japan, Mie prefecture. (A prefecture is a district roughly equivalent to a state in the United States).

We lived first in the small city of Matsusaka and then, in early 2007, moved deeper into the countryside to an area unknown even to many people living in Tokyo. Here my fiancé builds handmade houses using the rich lumber resources of Mie’s mountains. I teach English part time, study and take care of our gardens.

My Evolving Palette

Moving to Japan has turned a lot of my ideas about sustainable living upside down. At first, I tried to transplant notions of country living straight from America to Japan. I brought seeds with me and tried to grow all my favorite vegetables, only to find many of them ill-adapted to the humidity of this area. I shed more than one tear over the lack of fruit suitable for pies and jams. I even acquired a little oven, a rare commodity, which I use to bake bread every week.

But I’ve gradually realized that to live sustainably here, I need to adapt to the food culture around me, which has developed over many centuries in relation to what can be grown and hunted in this area. I’ve learned about local methods of preserving, such as drying persimmons and daikons and making salty pickled plums. As my food choices changed, I found it increasingly easier to depend on the bountiful land around me.

A New Perspective on Home Heating

But it’s not just the food that’s different. The appearance of the countryside itself is not at all what I’m used to. In Japan, a farm is not so much a piece of land as a way of living. Individual farms are uncommon. Instead, small clusters of houses are interspersed with terraced fields, forest and gardens. It’s common to have a number of fields in different locations, including some far up in the mountains, where tea and fruit are grown.