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
I’m really curious. So after I tell my tale, I expect some feedback from folks in other parts of the world, especially the U.S.
Very recently I had a relapse. It was a recurrence of something that first happened back in January 2020, when Masumi and I were in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It’s a sore throat from Hell!
The first time it happened, I thought for sure I had throat cancer. A huge lump made it almost impossible to swallow. Incredible pain. I can’t begin to describe what it felt like when the spicy Thai food hit the back of my throat. Think blowtorch and go from there. At least twice, I nearly passed out from the pain.
I didn’t say anything until I got back. We were guests of a very hospitable couple and I didn’t want to worry anyone or spoil the fun.
But the day after our plane landed here, I went to a throat specialist.
It wasn’t cancer. It was a TONSIL! At least part of a tonsil. Infected, inflamed, raising hell.
Now when I grew up, everyone had their tonsils removed at an early age. Standard procedure. I think I was four or five. Anyway, whoever removed mine must have been looking at the nurse across from him because he missed a big chunk. It’s still attached to the wall of my throat, ready to make trouble whenever a cantankerous virus or bacteria enters the scene.
The doctor I saw here was a genius! He diagnosed the problem and prescribed a cocktail of five drugs. I was already mending the next day. If five days, it was as if nothing had ever happened.
I had a recurrence a couple months ago. Same drug combination. Same immediate results.
Last week, I went through the same routine. Now we’re wondering if I should have the partial tonsil removed. We’ll decide next month. Ironically, Masumi and I are going back to Chiang Mai end of this month. We miss the elephants, hillside tribe people, and the night markets. We’re even taking a Thai cooking course this time around. So we’ll wait until we return before thinking about surgery.
Anyway . . . here’s my question. At the top of this article is a photo of the “drug cocktail,” a 5-day regimen combining powerful, latest generation antibiotics, an anti-inflammatory, a pain killer, and an ulcer-preventative (the anti-inflammatory drug and pain killer can be rough on the lining of the stomach). So there were FIVE drugs in all.
My cost was 480 yen for the entire package. That’s $3.47 USD.
I’m really curious. What would this cost say in the U.S. or Canada?
By the way, the bill for the doctor was even less expensive. 340 yen = $2.46.
So what is it? Socialism? Not really. It’s just a system strictly regulated by the government, which puts people before profits, which values the health of the population over the value of corporate holdings or stocks. Should it be any other way?
I’m trying to remember what adventures I had in America typically on a Sunday. It was so long ago, and involved so many different places, it’s hard to sum it up. I know in Portland, a day off usually involved riding my bike. If there was something going on downtown — street fair, art exhibit, parade — I’d drop by. I know that visiting Saturday Market, which stretched over into Sunday, was part of my routine. In the 80s and 90s when I was living in Los Angeles, I would often go to Venice Beach to look at the weirdos, roller skate, just stroll and people watch.
Just another day on Venice Beach in Los Angeles.
Whatever I did, it was nothing like what I do now here in Japan. This past Sunday was pretty typical. So here’s how it went.
Masumi found a park not that far from us — about an hour drive — which she had never been to. It consisted of 1000s of lavender plants. She also found a very unique restaurant nearby, a Persian restaurant. I have to say this came as quite a surprise, though it really shouldn’t have. Of course, you expect big cities to have a wide selection of international cuisine and our area is about as rural as it gets. Even so, we have a French restaurant right in Tambasasayama that is world-class, and our favorite Thai restaurant is similarly situated in a relatively tiny rural village about an hour-and-a-half away. I’ve not had a lot of Middle Eastern food, and certainly don’t ever recall eating Iranian. I was definitely looking forward to the adventure!
However, before we made it to lunch, as we were driving a curvy country road, Masumi spotted a truly spectacular Shinto Shrine. What made it such a breathtaking site was that it was tucked in the midst of majestic, 1000-year-old trees that reminded me of being among the redwood trees in California. I’ve been to many shrines. The setting of this one took my breath away. We had to explore!
Okay . . . we finally made it to the Persian restaurant. It had a very interesting genesis. Japanese wife discovers husband is cheating on her. They divorce. She looks online and meets a man living in Iran. She visits him and his family in Iran. They hit it off. They get married and return to Japan. (And they say Japanese people are timid and unadventurous?) They start a Persian restaurant. He cooks. She serves and collects the money. Now if that isn’t a truly charming, fairytale romance, I don’t know what is.
The bonus was that the food was not only authentic, it was extremely delicious!
Bellies full, smiles all around, we headed to the Lavender Park.
I’ll be honest. I’m not very fond of lavender. It’s not my favorite fragrance by a long shot. In fact, for me it generates images of old ladies with hairnets and orthopedic shoes. Not quite sure why. Bad childhood experience?
Even so, the park was phenomenal to visit. Lots of lavender for sure. And since it was high up on the side of a mountain, we had a wonderful view of a small town situated in the valley below and the terraced rice farms which surrounded it. The sun was extremely intense. I’m sure glad I had my new straw hat with me.
So there you have it, a typical Sunday here in Japan . . . which will likely never be repeated.
Because it’s about improvising and just seeing what’s out there. And of course having fun!
When Americans need to eat on the fly, they grab a hamburger.
When Japanese need to eat on the fly, they grab a rice ball.
The basic rice ball — actually there are no fancy rice balls — costs around 98 yen [$0.68].
Hamburgers can of course be upgraded with an enormous array of options. In an upscale restaurant, they can be over $18.00, in that case with the hamburger experience significantly enhanced by having it delivered to your table — the one with a view of the city skyline — by a lovely waitress or handsome waiter, smiling ear-to-ear. Even at McDonald’s, a Double Bacon Quarter Pounder with cheese sets you back $6.99 [1005 yen]. The most basic hamburger at McDonald’s — meat and bun, no cheese — pictured above, is $1.59 [229 yen], almost 2 1/2 times what a rice ball costs.
Then again, you get a lot in an American hamburger that you don’t get in a Japanese rice ball. There’s the preservatives, the growth hormones, the antibiotics, the residues of pesticides and herbicides, the traces of antipsychotics, blood pressure modulators, sleep aids, cocaine, MDMA and other recreational drugs commonly found in the drinking water in the U.S., micro-plastics, maybe depleted uranium.
Both being fast foods, hamburgers and rice balls come ready to eat. Theoretically, you can start chomping them down as soon as you pay for them, right at the check-out counter. For certain, you can eat them in your car or even walking to your car.
Unwrapping them is slightly different. I’ve had friends back in the U.S. who actually don’t even bother unwrapping a McDonald’s hamburger. They eat the wrapping right along with the burger and say it tastes pretty much the same, nice and greasy.
Unwrapping the rice ball is a little more involved. Masumi patiently instructed me in what she calls the 1-2-3 method and with some practice, I managed to master it. Here it is . . .
Now as long as this went according to plan, the delicious rice ball is ready for consumption!
Every culture has its advantages and disadvantages. I really love a good hamburger but I was never convinced that McDonald’s hamburgers were actual food. A long long time ago, when I was a pimply 20-something musician, I confess to being hooked on Big Macs. I recall they tasted really good, especially sitting in a park listening to some other local band.
Nutritional advice was not so readily available back then, at least not to the dumb-downed public, of which I was a clueless member. The most profound meme — this was before the word ‘meme’ had even been invented — on eating was: ‘You are what you eat.’ Which was among the reasons I never ate truck tires or dog poop.
Now, everything you wanted to know and a lot you don’t want to know is available on the web. There are no excuses for the eating habits — and yes, they are habits — of people and countries.
I’m not going to preach. I’ll close by making a couple points . . .
First, the most delicious rice ball doesn’t come close to tasting as good as the most delicious hamburger. That’s just a reality.
Here’s another reality, a statistical reality.
The life expectancy in the U.S. is 76.1 and falling. The life expectancy in Japan is 85.0 and rising.
Conclusion: Choose what you eat as if your life depended on it.
Octopuses are weird! Octopuses are creepy! The way they look. The way they move, slithering about frantically with those tentacles going in every direction, yet so frighteningly coordinated they promise to wrap up your head or face or limbs with slimy ropes, covered with suction cups ready to attach themselves in a slimy sucking unbreakable grip, then god knows what!
For some reason just hearing them mentioned, I used to immediately visualize giant octopuses enveloping ships and submarines, crushing them and drowning everyone aboard. I know that was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Captain Nemo in a life-or-death struggle not with an octopus, but a giant squid. Whatever! Big ugly sea creature. Tentacles. Bad attitude. It’s all the same to me.
Understandably . . .
For at least six decades of my life, I never once thought about eating an octopus, or any part of one. I put them right in there with rats, earthworms, cockroaches, garden slugs, slime mold, the beating heart of another human, in the I’d-rather-starve-to-death folder.
But something completely unexpected then happened. I’m not sure of the exact date but it was sometime in 2008. What I do know for sure is that I tried octopus and loved it! Masumi took me to the 道頓堀 district in Osaka — literally octopus central here in the Land of the Rising Sun — famous for takoyaki [蛸焼] and other octopus treats. It was the early days of our dating, so I was completely taken with her and all she was teaching me about Japan, the cuisine and the culture. Next thing I know I was eating the weird, creepy creature, and I WAS HOOKED.
Years later, I had some friends visit Masumi and I from America, I was preparing dinner, and just as a courtesy I thought I should ask: “Are you guys okay with me putting octopus on your salad?” I’ll never forget their look! They did their best to hide it, but it was somewhere between or a combination of horror, disbelief, revulsion, and fight-or-flight. I was amused. Because I did and still do remember my initial reactions when somehow confronted with the prospect.
How things change!
I can honestly say that octopus is among my Top 20 favorite Japanese edibles. It’s comfortably in my Top 50 all-time favorite foods from across the entire globe, which includes such diverse items as T-bone steak, cookie dough ice cream, pizza, BLT and grilled cheese sandwiches, hot fudge sundaes, French onion soup, cheese enchiladas, licorice, seaweed and sea salt potato chips, butter pecan ice cream and coca-cola floats, bacon-avocado cheeseburgers, yellowtail sashimi, Korean barbecue, Chinese hot-and-sour soup . . . you get the idea.
Traveling the world and living full-time in a country as different from America as Japan surely is, has taught me to be very open-minded. Still . . . don’t ask me to eat fried grasshoppers or the beating heart of another human being. I have to draw the line somewhere.
The excitement never stops here is the Japanese countryside.
A few months ago, we planted potatoes. This weekend we harvested them!
I still regard this whole experience as something of a miracle.
Of course, growing up in Detroit, Michigan — which at the time was the automobile capital of the known universe — I was very familiar with plants. There was the Dodge truck PLANT over on Mound Avenue. There was the auto assembly PLANT in Sterling Heights. My whole town was full of and surrounded by such plants. From age 14 through high school, I worked as an assistant shipping clerk for an automation machinery company which sold their product internationally. We shipped 150-200 foot-long machines which machined everything from cylinder heads to crankcases to intake manifolds, by sea and land to automotive manufacturing plants in Germany, England, Argentina, Australia and so on. Some of our behemoth product lines were even painted green, I guess to go with the wallpaper in the gigantic factories which would house them. True, I had heard of this thing called a “farm” but thought it had something to do with cultivating baseball players for the major leagues. Not really curious enough to give it much thought, I assumed that since people needed food, it just somehow showed up at the supermarket. The idea that edible plants had to be planted, which would then holistically and organically grow into something useful and hopefully delicious, was never on my radar.
Okay . . . enough about my pitiful agricultural ignorance.
It’s never too late to learn unless you’re dead. Since I’m still alive and minimally sentient, I have embraced the whole gardening thing with random relish and earthy delight.
But enough talk. Feast your hungry eyes on our potato harvest. While you do that, I’ll be surfing the internet for potato recipes. Because yes . . . we’ve got a lot of potatoes!
You’ve heard the expression, “The world is an oyster.” It’s attributed to Shakespeare, from The Merry Wives of Windsor. I have to come clean. I never bought into that. In fact, for some reason lately I’m leaning toward: “The world is a potato.” Which puts a whole new spin on global warming, wouldn’t you say?
I want to send some love to the wonderful fans of LIVE FROM JAPAN!
First, I thank all of you for the enormous outpouring of praise for my book. All 5-star reviews at Barnes & Noble. Fifteen 5-star reviews at Amazon. More satisfying than charts and book sales is knowing that people truly enjoyed the book. That’s the main and certainly most important reason for writing it in the first place.
Beyond my heartfelt gratitude, I want to remind everyone who has an interest in learning about the “real Japan”, that my sharing my unique life and experiences did not end with writing LIVE FROM JAPAN!
Since it was published in February 2021, I’ve continued to write articles and post them here at this website. Like the book, it’s a mixed bag of anecdotes about both life in my traditional rural town, and stories of travel and news from other parts of Japan.
I’ll make this very easy. Here is a list of all the articles to date, starting with the most recent:
I believe in seeking the truth. And seeking the truth requires careful observation, collection of all relevant evidence, and a dispassionate, objective evaluation of that evidence, drawing from it an acceptable and incontrovertible conclusion.
For all of my life, I’ve been looking at paintings. The fact is — as boring as this makes me as a person — when I visit a new city, among my first stops is an art gallery.
This means that over the many decades of my life, I’ve viewed thousands of paintings, works of art ranging from centuries past right up until the present.
Only very recently, however, I noticed something which had previously never caught my attention. And while I can’t put an exact date on it, this mind-blowing epiphany is . . .
Until only about 200 years ago, NO ONE HAD EYELASHES!
Go ahead! I challenge you. Find me a painting from the 18th Century or before where a person who either was part of some broader scene or individually featured in a portrait, has eyelashes.
YOU CAN’T!
I don’t see any eyelashes. Do you?
Now the indisputable truth is that until various fanciful post-realism genres — e.g. Impressionism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Fauvism, Cubism — caught hold and laid the visual foundation for the social-political chaos we are now immersed in, artists were meticulous, not to say OCD, about capturing every detail and nuance of the objects and subjects of their paintings.
I’m forced — by my strict adherence to the laws of empiricism and logic — to draw only one conclusion: If people had eyelashes back then, we would see them in the paintings.
Which means, eyelashes are a recent phenomenon, a genetic innovation which burst on the scene, literally thrusting itself suddenly and dramatically into the human genome, only quite recently.
Could I be wrong?
Come on! Rembrandt wasn’t a hack. NO EYELASHES!
Actually, why should we be surprised? Do you think anyone moonwalked before 1932? Is there any evidence of a knock-knock joke that pre-dates Shakespeare? When it comes to humans, it doesn’t necessarily take millennia for big evolutionary leaps to occur.
I’m sure that this “missing eyelash” enigma can be explained with some careful, focused investigation, rigorous research, applying scientific method with precision and a passion for discovering the truth. So here’s my offer: If the National Science Foundation or any other charitable trust is willing to allocate a few million dollars, I’m more than happy to look into this rather curious matter, producing some solid and satisfying answers.
As I write this, my wife Masumi is in Hiroshima with the entire 6th grade of her school, over eighty students. They’re on a field trip to visit the Peace Park and the Peace Museum.
This trip is something that they do every year. And it’s common among the elementary schools here in Hyogo and other prefectures throughout Japan. When the kids are in their last year, they go to this world-famous city to learn about the horrors of war.
Not only is it a vital learning experience, but it’s quite an adventure, even if it’s only two days. Masumi’s kids took the Shinkansen — high-speed bullet train — from Kobe, and traveling at up to 320 km/hr (200 mph), it only took an hour-and-a-half to get there. By car it’s a five hour drive.
First day, they went to the Peace Park and sang a beautiful song called “Negai” — which means ‘hope’. I recorded Masumi’s piano performance of the song and she played that over a portable speaker at the park. The kids sang this beautiful, hopeful song.
Here are the lyrics.
There’s so much to see and take in. The museum is a phenomenal experience. Masumi took me to it years ago. When I left, I decided that everyone on the planet — especially Americans, who seem to think war is fun and games — should spend a couple days learning both the real truth about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and understand that even having one nuclear weapon is sheer insanity. Currently, the US has 5,428. Russia has 5,977. Plus seven other nations additionally have 1,360 among them. Apparently, the human species has a death wish embedded in its DNA. Is there a vaccine for total madness?
The “dome” is the only structure to survive the atomic bomb, which detonated about 500 feet directly overhead. The photo is what it still looks like, the drawing is a rendering by Masumi’s 6th grade students.
Japan has no nuclear weapons. According to its constitution, specifically and unambiguously stated in Article 9, Japan can only have a purely defensive military.
Unfortunately, the reality of the “defense” force here is not that squeaky clean. The U.S. right now is encouraging a more aggressive Japanese military, one that will support U.S. efforts to contain China and maintain its domination over the rest of the world. Perhaps it will come as a surprise that the U.S. currently has 56 military bases in Japan, meaning it is still an occupied country — from a war that ended almost eight decades ago!
Thus, there is internal tension here in Japan about war and peace, just as there is in the U.S. and most countries. The people if Japan — the everyday citizens — have long memories. Japan was almost totally destroyed as a result of their attempt to conquer this part of the world. Lesson learned. Even now, most regular people want no part of it.
BUT . . . there are highly nationalistic individuals who’ve stayed in power. The ruling party — the one initially installed and still favored by the U.S. warmongers — has been continuously in control of the things since the U.S. dictated the terms of surrender to Japan after World War II. The U.S. has kept them securely under its thumb, assuring that 1) Japan never entertains again the idea of becoming an independent world power, and 2) Japan dutifully serves the national interests and geopolitical ambitions of U.S. empire. World domination-obsessed American puppet masters play on the nationalistic leanings of this group, who proudly want a powerful Japan as a major player on the world stage, and promote divisiveness and hostility, making sure that Japan is never on amicable terms with any other regional entities. Though Japan officially claims to only be committed to “self-defense”, it has a formidable fighting force, including submarines, fighter jets, infantry — far more than it needs to defend the homeland.
Which makes the extra-curricular education of the trip to Hiroshima even more vital. As with America, it’s the people who must keep the government in check, applying constant pressure to the official leadership to embrace diplomacy and peace.
It’s obvious that Masumi’s students get it. They wrote this declaration for their visit.
I’m so fortunate to be married to someone as deeply committed to ending war as I am. Unfortunately, not everyone Masumi works with is so enlightened. Prompted by U.S. propagandists, the government and media — just like in the U.S. — spread fear, mainly of China and North Korea, and try to convince the everyday citizens of the need for a bigger, better-equipped military. Of course, much of the additional equipment would come from the U.S. weapons manufacturers. How convenient!
Peace is a tough sell in today’s world. All we can do is tell the truth and hope for the best.
Life In Japan: A Typical Sunday
I’m trying to remember what adventures I had in America typically on a Sunday. It was so long ago, and involved so many different places, it’s hard to sum it up. I know in Portland, a day off usually involved riding my bike. If there was something going on downtown — street fair, art exhibit, parade — I’d drop by. I know that visiting Saturday Market, which stretched over into Sunday, was part of my routine. In the 80s and 90s when I was living in Los Angeles, I would often go to Venice Beach to look at the weirdos, roller skate, just stroll and people watch.
Whatever I did, it was nothing like what I do now here in Japan. This past Sunday was pretty typical. So here’s how it went.
Masumi found a park not that far from us — about an hour drive — which she had never been to. It consisted of 1000s of lavender plants. She also found a very unique restaurant nearby, a Persian restaurant. I have to say this came as quite a surprise, though it really shouldn’t have. Of course, you expect big cities to have a wide selection of international cuisine and our area is about as rural as it gets. Even so, we have a French restaurant right in Tambasasayama that is world-class, and our favorite Thai restaurant is similarly situated in a relatively tiny rural village about an hour-and-a-half away. I’ve not had a lot of Middle Eastern food, and certainly don’t ever recall eating Iranian. I was definitely looking forward to the adventure!
However, before we made it to lunch, as we were driving a curvy country road, Masumi spotted a truly spectacular Shinto Shrine. What made it such a breathtaking site was that it was tucked in the midst of majestic, 1000-year-old trees that reminded me of being among the redwood trees in California. I’ve been to many shrines. The setting of this one took my breath away. We had to explore!
Okay . . . we finally made it to the Persian restaurant. It had a very interesting genesis. Japanese wife discovers husband is cheating on her. They divorce. She looks online and meets a man living in Iran. She visits him and his family in Iran. They hit it off. They get married and return to Japan. (And they say Japanese people are timid and unadventurous?) They start a Persian restaurant. He cooks. She serves and collects the money. Now if that isn’t a truly charming, fairytale romance, I don’t know what is.
The bonus was that the food was not only authentic, it was extremely delicious!
Bellies full, smiles all around, we headed to the Lavender Park.
I’ll be honest. I’m not very fond of lavender. It’s not my favorite fragrance by a long shot. In fact, for me it generates images of old ladies with hairnets and orthopedic shoes. Not quite sure why. Bad childhood experience?
Even so, the park was phenomenal to visit. Lots of lavender for sure. And since it was high up on the side of a mountain, we had a wonderful view of a small town situated in the valley below and the terraced rice farms which surrounded it. The sun was extremely intense. I’m sure glad I had my new straw hat with me.
So there you have it, a typical Sunday here in Japan . . . which will likely never be repeated.
Because it’s about improvising and just seeing what’s out there. And of course having fun!