Finding the Good Life in Japan
(Page 3 of 4)
October/November 2008
By Winifred Bird
To our surprise, we discovered great garden soil beneath all the trash. That plot gave us bumper crops of watermelon, pumpkins and peanuts last summer. We fertilize it with local chicken manure, rice bran and compost, plus we mulch it with rice hulls.
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Neighbors warned us that the dirt path that runs past our garden is a thoroughfare for wild boars, which apparently love watermelon, but luckily we got to eat all of the melons.
My elderly neighbors, who have huge gardens of their own, provide a model and are a constant source of advice. After they retire from their paying jobs, many older people in Japan devote themselves to gardening, growing rice and tending citrus orchards. They are more than happy to share advice and seedlings with a young gardener (of which there are unfortunately few). Without this community of gardeners around me, I could never have adapted to such a different environment, full of unknown bugs, unfamiliar plants and surprising weather (including typhoons and “salt wind”).
Buying Local in the Japanese Countryside
We don’t yet grow as much of our own food as we’d like to, but buying food grown in our own community is easy. Although farmers markets are often disappointingly lackluster, there are several other excellent systems for distributing local food. First, small shops that sell local produce are plentiful. Second, there is a system of vendorless produce stalls called mujin-hanbai. Gardeners simply place a wooden shelf and tin money box outside their house and stock it with extra fruit and vegetables. Perhaps it wouldn’t work in a large city, but here no one worries about vegetable thieves. Third, there is a fantastic system of road stations, called michi-no-eki, all along Japan’s national highway network. They feature affordable local produce and fish, regional specialties and crafts. They are a great resource not only for passing tourists but also for people living in the area, and they make buying local as easy as it needs to be in order for it to become widespread. I would love to see such a system across the United States one day.
The more time I spend in the Japanese countryside, the more I begin to absorb the idea of community sufficiency as opposed to self sufficiency. My image of a remote farm where I strive to grow and raise everything myself is fading. I’m starting to realize how deeply my efforts toward sustainability depend on those around me. I rely on their knowledge and resources, their seedlings and boxes of oranges, and their commitment to caring for the land. It seems less relevant whether the pumpkin I eat was grown by me or by my neighbors.
Sadly, much of the rural landscape, honed for generations to provide for a large number of people in a small space, is falling into disuse: Carefully terraced fields disappear under weeds; multi-use native forests are invaded by bamboo, which is no longer harvested as aggressively as it once was; citrus orchards grow over with vines and die. Eating patterns have changed, and demand for food that can’t be grown in this area increases. (About 60 percent of Japan’s food is imported.)
