Mumbling and rambling, rambling on... 33 Poverty's delicacies, Vegetable chapter 1

In the neighborhood of our small village, there was a shop that combined a fishmonger, a butcher, and a caterer, as well as a candy store, a general store, an electronics shop, a hair salon, and a bicycle shop, but the only thing missing was a greengrocer. It's no wonder, though, as every house had a large field on its property where vegetables were growingin abundance. That's why, even if wedidn't grow them ourselves, people from neighboring houses would bring them over and leave them at our back door or in the shed without asking. We children loved sweets, but since we didn't yet understand the deep flavors of vegetables and wild plants, we didn't think they were anything particularly delicious.
Thinking about it now, even if I wanted to eat those flavors one more time, the vegetables of the past are different—not just a little, but completely different in both taste and aroma. The people who grow them are gradually becoming fewer, so I might not even be able to get them anymore.

Ogatte (growing):Growing
Wae (we):My house, our house, our own home

Bakkyamiso (Butterbur miso)
Ninge (bitter)
Mamasakage (on top of rice)

I wrote a poem about 'bakkyamiso' (butterbur miso). A second-grade elementary student did, anyway.
It's a class photo taken in front of the blackboard where that poem was written.
It was probably the first poem I ever wrote.
That round, anpan-like face in the top right is me.
If I had woken up even a little bit back then, maybe I would have taken a different path or had a different life... but no, that's not how it works. It's all 'what ifs.'
When you try doing things, you realize it's not easy, so in that sense, I suppose I had some foresight.

Since it was a village with deep snow, it was just a normal, recurring part of life every year, so we children didn't have any worries; when it snowed, we played in the snow, built igloos, went sledding, ate the snow, or cleared it away.
When the cold eased up and it got a little warmer, the base snow would melt, and the fields and roads would become muddy and slushy, which was a nuisance.
Even if snow piled up, you could just brush it off, and since it's just water when it melts, it doesn't stain your clothes, but the muddy water from melting snow would get mud on your clothes, which was unpleasant.
Before the muddy roads formed, butterbur sprouts would poke their faces out from between the patches of remaining snow. Even a thoughtless child like me would think, 'Oh, has spring come yet?'
I didn't think, 'Oh, that looks delicious.' They grew in such abundance on the edges of the fields and along the roadsides that we didn't crouch downand pick them with all our might. They grew like they were dying to be picked.

Bakkyamiso was something we made as a sign of the season, I suppose. It wasn't like we picked it from the roadside because we had nothing else to eat.
It's not like we ate it every single day, and the season for it was short.
1. Briefly boil the butterbur sprouts, soak them in water to remove the harshness, and chop them roughly.
2. Put them in a mortar, add sugar, mirin, and miso, and grind and mix them together.
3. Put it in a pot, heat it, and stir.
Still, being a child, I didn't think, 'This bitterness is indescribable,' but I ate the bitter, sweet-and-salty miso that smelled like butterbur on top of my rice.

Bakkyamiso is made from butterbur flower buds. It's the 'bud' of the 'butterbur.' It's the flowering stalk of the butterbur, so it's the bud part of the flower. Did you know that?
Butterbur sprouts taste like butterbur. They're parent and child, so that's natural. But the sprouts have a stronger bitterness. Maybe they're protecting themselves by pretending to be bitter poison so people won't take them.

Tempura of butterbur sprouts was probably fried by my father, who was in charge of tempura. We weren't exactly thrilled about it, though. Freshly fried, they are fluffy like small potatoes, but they have a bitter taste. If it were now, I might think they were delicious.
It wasn't until I was much older that I ordered a platter of wild vegetable tempura at an izakaya and thought, 'Wow, the mountain garlic and butterbur sprouts are delicious!'
While saying things like, 'Bitter experiences in life help you grow,' I drink bitter beer. My head gets dizzy, my spirits lift, and I start wanting to say things that sound good.
They say you learn that bitter things are delicious through experience.
It must be after you've tasted the sweetness, acidity, bitterness, and spiciness of life.

Yurugune (not easy):Not simple, difficult, painful
Achikodo (worries):Anxiety, things to worry about
Kagamaru (crouch):Lowering your hips

Shakishaki to (crunchy sound)
Kujinonagagara (from inside the mouth)
Fugudachi (Fukutachi greens)

Translation:
The deep snow has finally melted
We were able to brighten the dining table with boiled Fukutachi greens
Crunching away, the sound is pleasant as we taste the joy of spring
May good fortune stand in our home again this year
(Just kidding, that's what we say)

'Iii hi tabidachi' (A Good Day to Depart) is a nice song, isn't it.
'Fukutachi,' pronounced 'fugudachi' in our dialect. 'Fukudachi' (Standing Fortune)—what a nice name.
I'm a bit hazy on what kind of vegetable it was, but I remembered a vegetable called 'fugudachi' that had a crunchy texture like Chinese cabbage.

Fukutachi is a phantom vegetable that can only be eaten for two months during the harvest season from March to April, and it's a traditional vegetable of Akita in early spring. It's a spring vegetable for villages in deep snow areas where not many vegetables can be harvested.
It seems 'fukutachi' refers to vegetables like Chinese cabbage and greens that survive the winter under the snow and then grow stems when spring comes. Since there is also bok choy fukutachi, I wonder what kind of 'fugudachi' I was fed.
This might have been simmered with fried tofu, just like chives. If it's boiled, it's just soy sauce flavor, but if you simmer it, you add sugar and mirin, making it sweet and salty, and it goes well with rice.
'A good day, fugudachi.' It reminds me of the old days, with actors who are said to be the reincarnation of Momoe Yamaguchi. They look quite similar.

Kawamuide (peeling the skin)
Hosokoi himetake (slender Hime-take bamboo shoots)
Moegiiro (sprout green)

Translation:
Even the Hime-take bamboo shoots that filled a newspaper
Looked so slender and delicate once I peeled them
The nodes are a vivid sprout green

In my hometown, when we said 'bamboo shoots,' we meant the slender, pencil-like Hime-take (root-bending bamboo). Around May or June, when the snow had melted, we would receive them wrapped in crumpled newspaper from the fathers and mothers in the neighborhood who had gone to pick wild vegetables. Peeling those Hime-take was our job as children. It was a bit difficult unless you made a vertical cut with a knife or something. The tips were mostly just skin, and even if you thought you had received a lotin the newspaper, once you peeled them, there was only a little bit left.
Although they are called Hime-take, they aren't bamboo, but the young shoots of a bamboo grass called Chishima-zasa.

We would have them served in a bowl with miso soup made with 'yosagu' beans, served to usand we would crunch away at them. To my child's palate, the broth of this Hime-take miso soup was incredibly delicious, and it even had a scent that went straight through my nose.
Generally, when it comes to wild vegetables, they have a harshness or bitterness that we children were not fond of, but these had little harshness and a faintly sweet aroma, so we could eat them.
After I moved to Tokyo, there were times when my family would send me canned ones from the countryside. Since they were precious, I would eat them in a stew instead of miso soup, but it might have been better to just throw them all into miso soup at once and eat them heartily.
My sister's family seems to own a mountain, and they go wild vegetable picking when the season comes. It's a customary event in early spring, but lately, there are too many bear incidents, so it's a worry everywhere.

Yosagu mame (a type of pea)
Shigoi te wa (stripping with teeth)
Susuru shiru (sipping the soup)

I was a bit bad with miso soup back then. The dried fish used for the broth would suddenly appear at the end, and the leftover miso sediment was unpleasant.
Even with such miso soup, there are two kinds I still want to drink today:
'Yosagu bean miso soup' and 'Hime-take miso soup.'
Like snap peas, you can eat both the skin and the beans, but unlike snap peas, the skin isn't that thick, and the beans are firm and sweet.
Since we boiled them without removing the strings, I would hold the string of the yosagu bean from the bowl, sandwich it between my teeth, pull the string out, leave the soft skin and beans in my mouth, and chew both the crunchy skin and the fluffy beans.

I couldn't remember the name of these beans—they weren't just regular peas—for a while, and it felt like having a small bone stuck in my throat.
When I returned home in early summer, my sister and I went to greet the person who was taking care of our rice field cultivation. As we were leaving, the father there gave us a plastic bag, saying, 'It's just a little bit.' 'These are yosagu beans. For miso soup, it has to be these, after all.'
'Oh, yosagu beans!' I didn't say it out loud, but I did a little dance inside.
I went back to my sister's parents' house, had them make me some miso soup right away, and drank it.
They were a bit smaller than the yosagu beans I ate in the old days, and the sweetness wasn't quite the same, but it was that 'yosagu bean miso soup.'

Speaking of 'yosagu,' there is something I am grateful to my grandmother for.
When I was born, my father said he would name me 'Mosagu' or 'Gosagu,' but my grandmother stopped him, saying, 'That's such an old-fashioned name, stop it.' That is my grandmother's greatest achievement for me.
I've had various unpleasant things happen and thought about changing my name, but remembering that, I decided against it. It's not the name's fault, anyway. It's just my own doing.

Junsai no (water shield)
Jenkosa nemaru (sitting at the banquet table)
Aba sumashi (grandmother's clear soup)

Jenko (banquet/table):Banquet seat, dining table
Nemaru (sit):Sit, take a seat, relax, rest

Junsai (water shield) was a luxury item, wasn't it. The bottled ones were high-grade, small, with tiny buds and strong jelly-like slime, and you often see them in souvenir shops. The ones in plastic bags tied with rubber bands at the ends had somewhat opened caps, were larger, had weaker slime, were lower grade, and you often see them in supermarkets.

Clear soup containing small, curled-up Junsai with transparent, squishy slime around them could only be eaten at ceremonial banquets.
In my day, they were almost never served with regular meals; they were only for clear soups or vinegared dishes at formal village or relative gatherings.
When I think of ceremonial banquets, I remember my grandmother with her perm, wearing a vivid sprout-green kimono. It was like 'clothes make the man,' and she looked like a refined mother from somewhere. Sitting at the table, she was smiling with a gentle expression.

For mothers in the old days, ceremonial occasions meant getting a perm.
Even in sucha small village, there were probably one or two hair salons.
My grandmother was busy pulling a handcart, getting perms, and doing all sorts of things.
When I asked my sister if she had a photo of her in that kimono, she said, 'I think it might have been taken after she got sick.'
It must have been a photo from when she went to a neighbor's wedding while she was temporarily discharged from the hospital in Yokote. Come to think of it, her face was a bit thin.

Asatsuyu no (morning dew)
Toge ni sasarede (pricked by thorns)
Kyuri mogi (picking cucumbers)

In the field by the house, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, sword beans, comfrey, chives, water dropwort, and all sorts of things were growing. Or rather, were planted.
If you went to pick them while the morning dew was still there, the cucumbers had prickles on their bumps, and the eggplants had thorns on their calyxes, so if you weren't careful, it hurt. Well, that's proof of freshness. We didn't have fancy things like work gloves, either. It was bare hands, and my hands were soft.
Cucumbers weren't straight and smooth like the ones sold in supermarkets; they were coiled, gourd-shaped, and had all sorts of forms. Moreover, they were covered in thorns. The seeds inside were also large, and some were watery like the inside of a melon. The taste was also somehow astringent, a little bitter, and had a very green, melon-like flavor. But when you made pickles, they had a great flavor.

Tomatoes were sour with the taste of the sun, so I didn't like them. We didn't have high-sugar ones like today. We would pick even the green ones from the field, cut them, add soy sauce, and eat them cold. Some were not yet ripe, and we would crunch on them.

Eggplants weren't eggplant-shaped; many were oval or round.
We didn't grow them, but there were round small eggplants for pickling, which I think you pick early before they grow too much, and there were small eggplant pickles pickled in something like glutinous rice.
We would eat them floating in a bowl filled with water, and when you bit into them, they would make a 'snap!' sound, the umami would come out from inside, and the saltiness wasn't too strong, so they were delicious.

There was something like a monster of a flat pea with pods as big as a hatchet, called a sword bean, and the miso-pickled version of this is also a nostalgic taste.
Summer pickles were fresh, juicy, and had a light taste, so they were easy to eat. Winter pickles had a taste like they were over-pickled, and they were salty.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

When I found something that looked like bamboo grass in the backyard (courtyard) of my sister's house in the countryside,
She said, 'It's Japanese ginger (myoga). No one in this house eats it.'
No one eats it? What a waste!
'If it grows, send it to me. I'll try planting it, so send me some seedlings!'
When I said that, a refrigerated delivery arrived eventually. It was sent twice, but my son, who loves Japanese ginger, finished eating it, got a taste for it, and asked longingly, 'Is the season over already?' so I messaged my sister on LINE.
Even though I told her, 'The flowers have bloomed, so maybe next year!', a third shipment arrived.
Since it was a refrigerated delivery, I didn't want to let it rot, so I immediately pickled it in salt and soup stock.
There were more cucumbers than I could eat, and when I was touching them wondering what to do, I felt a 'prick.' The bumps on the cucumber's body are painful.
Come to think of it, I remembered that the cucumbers in my parents' field when I was a child were all different shapes, painful to pick, green-smelling, had seeds, and were juicy.
They are vegetables of the past, but they were all earthy, tasted like the sun, had strong characteristics, and were hard to eat. They are vegetables that are hard to get now, even if you want to eat them.
When you want to eat vegetables, there are no vegetables.

Well then, see you later!