How to endure? It's an elemental question perfectly matched to the endless, ripening fields of the organic farm Land Mann in the town of Biei, Hokkaido.
Stretched out to the horizon and topped by boundless blue, the potato crops of farmer, Land Cafe owner and sagaciously unpretentious German Stefan Koester-Hirose convey infinity while revealing a carefully etched plan for endurance.
"Potatoes exhaust the soil, so it takes a few years to recover," says Koester-Hirose, 54. "See there, at the edge of the sky where the trees line the horizon? You can see green land, and then different green land, dotted with clover. Next is new green barely coming through the dirt next to the potatoes here, and then after the potatoes, we have the sunflowers as green manure to help the soil recover."