If I had a thousand dollars to spare, I would have bought it--a thousand dollar lunchbox. It sat on a black lacquer tray inside a glass case. I could hear it calling me, and if I ever win the lottery, it's coming back from Okinawa inside my suitcase.
That kind of box is called a jubako. Ju means layers, and hako (bako) means box. There are three tiny boxes in which fancy food can be arranged. They fit neatly one on top of the other and are covered by a perfectly fitted lid. The boxes are plain black lacquer; the real beauty is in the lid. It is made through a technique known as raden.
Smooth and shiny as glass, but warm to the touch, the lid is also black lacquer. However, it is inlaid with bits of shell that glow like pearls against velvet. The one that captured my heart used bits of abalone shell to depict blue and green flowers and vines. Others used white mother-of-pearl, and they were the kind of objects that, if you have to ask the price, you shouldn't be buying them.
I couldn't look at them without admiring the people who crafted them. What did they use? Wood from a fallen tree. Lacquer distilled from a plant similar to poison ivy. The shells their food came in. That, plus brain power, to figure out how to do the work. That, plus the artistic imagination to make the designs. That, plus a heart open to the potential for creating beauty and value.
Nature plus human beings--what a wonderful pairing it can be!
2008年6月25日水曜日
2008年6月18日水曜日
Rain, Rain
The rainy season front is moving up the Japanese archipelago. It's leaving Okinawa behind and Tokyo's turn for misty, muggy rain has come.
The rainy season has several traditional names: "uki"--literally rain time, "tsuyu", and the more poetic pronunciation "bai-u".
"Bai-u" means plum rain. The story goes that the green plums--about the size of a quail's egg--turn yellow and fall from the trees when the rainy season swings into high gear. Plop, plop! They fall in the night, echoing the sound of big, fat rainy season raindrops.
The timing is certainly right. Although I have never heard the plop of plums falling in the garden, the markets are filled with them when the rainy season is at its height.
First come the bright green ones, hard as stones. They have only one use: you put them in a jar, add rock sugar in a quantity equal to the weight of the plums (people argue about this), and fill the jar with a potent alcohol called white liquor. When the sugar dissolves and the alcohol takes on a golden glow--usually around August, at the earliest--your plum wine is ready to drink.
Next come the softer, yellower plums. These, too, have only one use: to be pickled in salt and eaten with rice. They make the beloved staple food "ume-boshi".
Making ume-boshi is several weeks' work. First you wash and dry the plums, one by one. Then you put them in a jar with salt equal to one-third the plums' weight (people argue about this). As the juice collects in the jar, you roll the jar around, swishing the juice up and down and around each and every plum. That's the easy part. The hard part is coloring them with the leaves and stems of the red shiso plant.
You deal with the shiso by grinding it in a bowl with a serrated surface, using your hands and a lot of salt. Ouch! It stings. When you've got a quart of the maroon-colored glop (sorry, that seems to be the only word that truly describes what you've made from the shiso) you pour it in with the plums. Occasionally, you roll the jar around, swishing the juice up and down and around each and every plum.
By the time the rainy season ends, you are ready for the finishing touch. You need three days in a row of blinding, hot, dry sunshine. You also need a big, outdoor space where you can spread the plums in a single layer to dry. Put them out in the morning, roll them around from time to time during the day, put them back in the juicy jar over night, and repeat the next day and the next.
When they are wrinkled and just dry enough, voila! You have made pickled plums.
The rainy season has several traditional names: "uki"--literally rain time, "tsuyu", and the more poetic pronunciation "bai-u".
"Bai-u" means plum rain. The story goes that the green plums--about the size of a quail's egg--turn yellow and fall from the trees when the rainy season swings into high gear. Plop, plop! They fall in the night, echoing the sound of big, fat rainy season raindrops.
The timing is certainly right. Although I have never heard the plop of plums falling in the garden, the markets are filled with them when the rainy season is at its height.
First come the bright green ones, hard as stones. They have only one use: you put them in a jar, add rock sugar in a quantity equal to the weight of the plums (people argue about this), and fill the jar with a potent alcohol called white liquor. When the sugar dissolves and the alcohol takes on a golden glow--usually around August, at the earliest--your plum wine is ready to drink.
Next come the softer, yellower plums. These, too, have only one use: to be pickled in salt and eaten with rice. They make the beloved staple food "ume-boshi".
Making ume-boshi is several weeks' work. First you wash and dry the plums, one by one. Then you put them in a jar with salt equal to one-third the plums' weight (people argue about this). As the juice collects in the jar, you roll the jar around, swishing the juice up and down and around each and every plum. That's the easy part. The hard part is coloring them with the leaves and stems of the red shiso plant.
You deal with the shiso by grinding it in a bowl with a serrated surface, using your hands and a lot of salt. Ouch! It stings. When you've got a quart of the maroon-colored glop (sorry, that seems to be the only word that truly describes what you've made from the shiso) you pour it in with the plums. Occasionally, you roll the jar around, swishing the juice up and down and around each and every plum.
By the time the rainy season ends, you are ready for the finishing touch. You need three days in a row of blinding, hot, dry sunshine. You also need a big, outdoor space where you can spread the plums in a single layer to dry. Put them out in the morning, roll them around from time to time during the day, put them back in the juicy jar over night, and repeat the next day and the next.
When they are wrinkled and just dry enough, voila! You have made pickled plums.
2008年6月13日金曜日
Top Ten World Cities
Naha, Okinawa, didn't make the cut. It's not one of the world's ten best cities, but neither is New York or Tokyo.
That's OK.
It's still my favorite, and the reason has nothing to do with the usual criteria like standard of living, housing, transportation, business opportunities and all that. I like it because it has everything you need, plus--in spite of its sprawling size, it feels like a village.
People know each other. Circles of friendship overlap.
The other day, I attended a reception outside of Naha. It was for a marine archaeology research NPO. To my surprise, the guest seated to my right was a bamboo flute maker I'd been eager to meet. The man to my left was the developer of a healing garden I'm planning to write about. Both, it turned out, are friends of the butterfly park creator I met the next day for coffee.
I would like to suggest creative synergy as a criteria for choosing a great city.
Do people talk to each other? Do they inspire each other? In a great city, you can find the time. You can find the place. You can catch up with the people you want to talk with, live and in person, and share the joy of creativity taking wing.
That's OK.
It's still my favorite, and the reason has nothing to do with the usual criteria like standard of living, housing, transportation, business opportunities and all that. I like it because it has everything you need, plus--in spite of its sprawling size, it feels like a village.
People know each other. Circles of friendship overlap.
The other day, I attended a reception outside of Naha. It was for a marine archaeology research NPO. To my surprise, the guest seated to my right was a bamboo flute maker I'd been eager to meet. The man to my left was the developer of a healing garden I'm planning to write about. Both, it turned out, are friends of the butterfly park creator I met the next day for coffee.
I would like to suggest creative synergy as a criteria for choosing a great city.
Do people talk to each other? Do they inspire each other? In a great city, you can find the time. You can find the place. You can catch up with the people you want to talk with, live and in person, and share the joy of creativity taking wing.
2008年6月9日月曜日
Don't Call Them Herbs
One of the reasons Okinawa is justly famed for longevity has to do with the natural healing power of plants. In an extraordinarily beautiful location overlooking the Pacific Ocean, there is a large-ish garden dedicated to growing native healing plants. It's an added attraction to the popular Kurukuma Restaurant in Tsukishiro City, and I spent a refreshing hour strolling through the grounds in the rain the other day. (It's mid-rainy season now in Okinawa.)
When I called the plants grown there herbs, I was duly corrected. The right word is 'yaku-soh'." (literally, medicine-grasses) Herbs are mainly for adding taste and fragrance to food. Okinawan healing plants are linked to specific medical effects, such as lowering blood pressure. However, just like herbs, they are often added to whatever's cooking or made into tea.
Hibiscus tea for beautiful skin. Mulberry tea to cure a cold. Ukon tea for the liver. That sort of thing.
Surely Okinawa isn't the only place where natural healing plants grow. However, it may be one of the few places where the medicinal uses of leaves, flowers, stems and roots are common knowledge and hold a valued place in daily life.
The environment is so generous, if only we would respect it more and take better care of it. As my niece likes to say: "Save the Earth, it's the only planet with chocolate." Kidding aside, chocolate comes from cacao, and cacao is also a traditional healing plant.
When I called the plants grown there herbs, I was duly corrected. The right word is 'yaku-soh'." (literally, medicine-grasses) Herbs are mainly for adding taste and fragrance to food. Okinawan healing plants are linked to specific medical effects, such as lowering blood pressure. However, just like herbs, they are often added to whatever's cooking or made into tea.
Hibiscus tea for beautiful skin. Mulberry tea to cure a cold. Ukon tea for the liver. That sort of thing.
Surely Okinawa isn't the only place where natural healing plants grow. However, it may be one of the few places where the medicinal uses of leaves, flowers, stems and roots are common knowledge and hold a valued place in daily life.
The environment is so generous, if only we would respect it more and take better care of it. As my niece likes to say: "Save the Earth, it's the only planet with chocolate." Kidding aside, chocolate comes from cacao, and cacao is also a traditional healing plant.
2008年5月28日水曜日
Africa comes to Tokyo: The Hole in the Road
This is TICAD week--Tokyo International Conference on African Development. Coincidentally, I just read an essay by the late Polish newsman Ryszard Kapucinski on what he saw when he worked in Africa: thousands and thousands of capable people with absolutely nothing to do. No resources. No jobs. No homes. Refugees who lost everything except the very last treasure, life itself.
One day, he drove a few hundred miles to see a famed marketplace located outside a scruffy village. The miserable single-track road wound on forever, until it reached the village, where it had to squeeze between mud brick huts lining both sides of the road. He was almost in sight of the village, when traffic came to a halt. Carts, trucks, rickety buses, and cars stopped in the midday sun with no place to go. No way forward. No way to back up.
He got out of the car to see what was wrong.
Many, many cars ahead of him, he spied the problem. It was a gigantic hole. Smack in the middle of the road. Deep enough to swallow a car whole, and no way around it. The only way to move was forward, into the hole.
People gathered to watch. They had nothing else to do.
The first few cars could drive in and climb out again under their own power. Each car, however, made the hole a little deeper, a little more thrilling. To make a long story short, it reached the point where a car could plunge in, but there was no way its owner could drive it out.
That's when one of the male bystanders got a rope and offered to help. Before long, he had a thriving business. Several helpers, too.
Not to be left out, the women scrambled to put together some snacks, and sold them to the drivers waiting for their turn at the hole in the road. Kids carried water up and down the line of waiting cars. Vendors on their way to the official market stopped in their tracks and set up stalls near the head of the traffic jam where there was a little room at the side of the road.
By day's end, the scruffy nothing of a village had become a bustling profit center.
If people can make something out of nothing but a muddy hole in the road, imagine what they could do with real resources. Hopes are high for good results from the TICAD.
One day, he drove a few hundred miles to see a famed marketplace located outside a scruffy village. The miserable single-track road wound on forever, until it reached the village, where it had to squeeze between mud brick huts lining both sides of the road. He was almost in sight of the village, when traffic came to a halt. Carts, trucks, rickety buses, and cars stopped in the midday sun with no place to go. No way forward. No way to back up.
He got out of the car to see what was wrong.
Many, many cars ahead of him, he spied the problem. It was a gigantic hole. Smack in the middle of the road. Deep enough to swallow a car whole, and no way around it. The only way to move was forward, into the hole.
People gathered to watch. They had nothing else to do.
The first few cars could drive in and climb out again under their own power. Each car, however, made the hole a little deeper, a little more thrilling. To make a long story short, it reached the point where a car could plunge in, but there was no way its owner could drive it out.
That's when one of the male bystanders got a rope and offered to help. Before long, he had a thriving business. Several helpers, too.
Not to be left out, the women scrambled to put together some snacks, and sold them to the drivers waiting for their turn at the hole in the road. Kids carried water up and down the line of waiting cars. Vendors on their way to the official market stopped in their tracks and set up stalls near the head of the traffic jam where there was a little room at the side of the road.
By day's end, the scruffy nothing of a village had become a bustling profit center.
If people can make something out of nothing but a muddy hole in the road, imagine what they could do with real resources. Hopes are high for good results from the TICAD.
2008年5月23日金曜日
Name that Mountain
Did you guess Mt. Fuji? It's understandable because both mountains have similar silhouettes.
This one is Mt. Yotei, and it is in Hokkaido. It overlooks the town of Niseko.
Niseko has two claims to fame. One is the incomparable powder snow in winter that draws visitors to Niseko from around the world. The other claim to fame? Niseko is probably the only place in Japan where you are more likely to hear English being spoken than Japanese. Why? Because of the powder snow. Winter in Japan is summer vacation time for Australians.
Isn't it a marvel that our planet has complementary hemispheres?
G'day from Niseko, with love!
2008年5月19日月曜日
The One-Ton Bomb Next Door
We all know lots of reasons why war is hell. Here's another one: no one cleans up afterwards.
Yesterday 16,000 people--including all the patients in the local hospital--had to run for their lives down leafy, suburban streets. Why? While digging the foundation for someone's brand new house, construction workers came face to face with an unexploded WWII bomb. One unpredictable ton of war's leftovers.
Would it explode? No one knew. So 16,000 people were asked to leave their homes, their businesses, their oxygen and IVs.
Luckily, the professionals who came immediately were able to defuse it and carry it away to wherever it is you take one ton bombs.
However...
If there is one bomb under the vacant lot next door, can you be sure there isn't another one just like it hiding under your house?
Yesterday 16,000 people--including all the patients in the local hospital--had to run for their lives down leafy, suburban streets. Why? While digging the foundation for someone's brand new house, construction workers came face to face with an unexploded WWII bomb. One unpredictable ton of war's leftovers.
Would it explode? No one knew. So 16,000 people were asked to leave their homes, their businesses, their oxygen and IVs.
Luckily, the professionals who came immediately were able to defuse it and carry it away to wherever it is you take one ton bombs.
However...
If there is one bomb under the vacant lot next door, can you be sure there isn't another one just like it hiding under your house?
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