We’ve been hopping from field to field all morning and now have a colorful array of natsu yasai (summer vegetables) loaded in the back of our kei truck. It’s scorching outside and will only continue to get hotter as we approach midday, so we’re heading back to the “office” for a snack. The latest batch of amazake (sweet rice drink) is sitting in the fridge, awaiting our arrival.
I’m interning at Hiruzen Kougei, a shizen-saibai (natural cultivation) farm located in the small village of Chuka, Okayama Prefecture. Its makeshift office is spread over the ground floor of Kudo, a farmhouse-cum-restaurant where special events with guest chefs and craftspeople are held throughout the year. Kudo is also my home for the next month or so. There’s a futon laid out for me on the second floor, and I’m told I have free rein of the kitchen. It makes for quite the bachelor pad. Adorning one of the counters is a “d design travel” plaque — an award given by one of Tokyo’s most stylish homeware stores. It’s pretty impressive for a place that was renovated on a shoestring budget and had no walls or ceiling to speak of before that.
Erika and Yuji Takaya took a leap of faith when they moved here in 2011. Born and raised in Hachioji, Tokyo, neither of them come from farming backgrounds, and they had no connections in the local area. Their training in the field, so to speak, came in the form of one year working part-time together at Natural Harmony, a distributor in Chiba that sources naturally farmed produce from across the country. Yuji juggled this with more hands-on volunteer work at the farm of shizen-saibai legend Hiroshi Takahashi, an experience that still informs much of his approach to farming today.
The food we want to eat
My mother had a vegetable patch when I was growing up, and I once planted some potatoes at the school gardening club, but aside from that, I don’t have any farming or gardening experience and spend the majority of my time indoors. For me, knowing the lay of the land means knowing which supermarket or yaoya (greengrocer) in my neighborhood of Tokyo has the best deals on any given day. I like food, and I like cooking, but years of thrifty student living have led me to put price over provenance. If it just so happens that my tomatoes come from Kumamoto or my apples from Aomori, then that’s just an added bonus — the cherry on top, if you will.
So, what brings me to the fields of Hiruzen Kougei? It really does all come down to food.
Last year, I heard rumors about a farm in Okayama that supposedly makes Japan’s best monaka (adzuki bean paste sandwiched between mochi wafers). I don’t think I even knew what monaka was at the time, but my curiosity was piqued, and I began scrolling through Hiruzen Kougei’s website. After reading its credo of “Tabetaimono o Tsukuru” (“Growing the Food We Want to Eat”), and its belief that the most delicious produce is grown in healthy soil that’s free from any pesticides or fertilizers, I soon became keen for a taste, both of the lifestyle and the monaka.
There’s also more to this tiny village of around 600 people than meets the eye. For example, the local tofu shop, Koyazuka Tofu, is one of the few stores in the country that still makes tofu using a jigama (special cauldron) heated by a wood-fired kiln. And then there’s Ryo, the unagi (eel) restaurant with a past life as a Michelin-starred restaurant in Nakameguro. These are just two of the places to have opened in Chuka since Hiruzen Kougei was established, and their stories of how or why they came to settle here are in many ways representative of all the rest: They were introduced to Erika and Yuji by a mutual friend, they stayed at Kudo, they fell for the spring water and the scenery and that was that. Considering where I am on my own path, it seems my fate may have already been decided.
Ephemeral beauty
It’s August, and the tōmorokoshi (corn) season is in full swing. Yuji has been waking up at the crack of dawn to capture the kernels at their sweetest. He pulls into Kudo at 6 a.m. in a kei truck filled with the stuff — a veritable cornucopia — and hands me a few ears for my first day.
“Try some of them raw first,” Yuji says, his only instruction.
This accompanies what already looks to be a very special breakfast. A chef from Hiroshima, Shingo Ishioka, just finished a short residency at Kudo and was kind enough to make me a platter of onigiri (rice balls) before leaving. He also threw in some leftover pickles and garnishes, many of which are new to me, like sōmen kabocha tsukemono (pickled spaghetti squash) and a furikake (rice topping) mix of toasted buckwheat seeds and tenkasu (batter bits).
Although I’m left to my own devices for breakfast thereafter, the quality of the ingredients lying around Kudo is such that even a bowl of tamago-kake gohan (rice mixed with raw egg and soy sauce) is something to savor. The biggest revelation of all is the miso soup that Erika shows me how to make: Combine Hiruzen Kougei miso with boiling water, chuck in a few strips of ita wakame (thin sheets of dried kelp) and you’re done — no faffing around with dashi required. A cunning shortcut, yet, without the simple luxuries of good miso and freshly drawn spring water, not one that’s worth taking.
My monaka moment comes when Hideharu and Tomoko Yoshioka, a husband-and-wife food-writer duo who go by the name “Okaz Design,” do a cooking demonstration at Kudo off the back of their work on NHK’s “Chimu Dondon” TV show. The 25-episode miniseries is about a young Okinawan who tries to make it as a chef in Tokyo, so Hideharu and Tomoko — the show’s food supervisors — really had their work cut out for them. Assuming they were as generous to everyone on set as they are to everyone here at Kudo, they probably didn’t make life easy for themselves either, as they’ve gone above and beyond in preparing us all makanai (staff meals) each day.
The Yoshiokas cook with whatever is on hand in the days leading up to the demonstration — rustling up such delights as a chāhan (stir-fried rice) made with beetroot leaves and nattō (fermented soybeans) — but on the day of the event itself, they treat us to everything that the customers are having. Luckily for me, this includes the optional monaka add-on from the Kudo menu as well.
Filled with a generous scoop of yomogi (Japanese mugwort) ice cream, it arrives with the lid left open wide like a gaping clam shell, the adzuki beans a shiny bed of pearls. I’m told that time is of the essence, as the thin mochi wafers start to lose their crispness as soon as you take them out of the packet. I grab one quick picture before stuffing it into my mouth. Perhaps this is what they mean by ephemeral beauty.
A roll of the dice
In many ways, life feels far richer out here in the countryside than it does in Tokyo. The satisfaction that comes from a hard day’s work in the fields is incomparable to anything I’ve felt after a day holed up in an office. I’m under no illusions, though, that doing a month-long farmstay for a change of air can fully capture what it’s like to live and breathe this year in, year out. Erika and Yuji have been farming for 12 years now, and while they may be reaping the fruits of their labor at the moment, this is clearly only one side of the story.
I catch a glimpse of the other side when Typhoon Lan arrives in mid-August and casts a pall over Kudo. When you live off the land to the extent that you rely on it for sustenance as well as an income, any weather event can have an outsized impact on your livelihood. This is what makes being a farmer, particularly a shizen-saibai farmer, equal parts nerve-wracking and humbling. Mother Nature has the last word — all you can do is roll the dice.
The typhoon brings the corn season to an early end and fells a few rows of climbing plants, but aside from that, the damage isn’t too major. Chuka as a whole seems to make a lucky escape. Yuji deems it another case of giri sēfu (safe, but only just) — a variation on what must be one of his favorite words: giri-giri (just barely). I think Yuji himself is beginning to realize just how much he uses the word, and how this is in no small part because of what he does for a living.
“There are any number of variables — weather, money, your own health,” Yuji says. “You make it through the year, but it always feels a little giri-giri.”
A hiker’s wonderland
Summer may be one of the busier seasons on the farm, but living in a place like Chuka makes it easy to utilize even the smallest snippets of downtime. Onsen (hot spring) towns like Yubara and Misasa are just a short drive away, so the working days are always capped off with a leisurely bath. This leaves little time for watching Netflix, sure, but it’s this, along with the meals, that ultimately nourishes you and keeps you going.
If you’re to really make the most of the surrounding area, though, it’s often a case of work hard, play hard. Chuka is just a stone’s throw away from Daisen-Oki National Park, a wonderland for hikers that’s home to the eponymous Mount Daisen, the tallest mountain in the region. I have my sights set on one of the smaller peaks, Mount Mitoku, as this is where Nageiredo — popularly known as “Japan’s most dangerous national treasure” — is located. A small wooden building perched precariously high on a cliff face, Nageiredo is a marvel in engineering that looks like a disaster waiting to happen. Much of its history is still largely unknown, but it was built sometime in the latter half of the 12th century and, aside from some recent repair works, has remained standing ever since.
There are no paths that lead directly to Nageiredo, which means you can only view it from a distance. This alone is a treacherous task, and it’s not for nothing that the mountain has long been a site for shugyō (ascetic training). Solo hikers are shooed away by the gatekeeper for their own safety, and everyone else has to undergo a brief shoe inspection before proceeding to the start of the trail. Yuji and I are wearing proper hiking shoes, so we pass, but Erika’s trainers are given the thumbs down, leaving her with no choice but to rent a pair of warazōri (straw sandals).
Any smugness Yuji and I may feel is soon dispelled, as it’s us, not Erika, who are slipping and sliding on the steep mountain trail. Regardless of how much grip you have, you spend long portions of the hike with your head down in search of footholds in the bumpy terrain. The forest floor is one vast, sprawling network of tree roots, and the clearings are all boulders and crags.
Roughly halfway into the one-hour hike to the top, you reach Monjudo, the other major landmark on the trail. This building seems to have more structural support than Nageiredo, but as you make your way around the veranda and take in the sweeping vistas, it feels as if gravity is gently trying to pull you over the edge. One step in the wrong direction and, well, you really will find yourself at one with nature — once and for all.
I’m so bowled over by the ascent that I’m caught off guard when Nageiredo finally comes into view. The tranquility is jarring. It stands there perfectly still, yet all that’s stopping it from plunging 300 meters into the ravine below are some stilts that, much like our legs during the hike, are placed in whatever grooves and crevices the builders could find in the rocks below. It’s an awesome spectacle, but one that will forever tease us with its mystery and secrets. Everything about it remains just out of reach.
Changing tastes
Work, play, weekdays, weekends — four weeks of continuous fun whizz by without me even registering what day of the week it is, let alone how far into the trip I am. I’m gutted when I realize it’s all over, and the holiday blues hit me like a brick wall once I’m back in Tokyo. “Even the water tastes different,” I say to bemused family and friends.
My time in Chuka recalibrated so many of my fundamental values, however, and therein lies a new beginning. This not only encompasses the food I eat each day, but everything from the amount of time I spend outdoors to the articles I read when I’m procrastinating. Never in my life did I think I’d be reading up on the soil food web, yet here I am.
How far I’ll pursue these new avenues, I can’t say, but consider the seed well and truly planted.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.