THE WILD NEIGHBORHOOD

One of the many fine things about Japan is the way in which sansai (lit: mountain vegetables) are an integral part of just about everyone's diet. Even in the cities, where the hunger for the "natural" is growing apace, some sansai are showing up in the supermarkets, though those are usually grown on farms, not wild. Wild is inimical to business. Apart from being free (actually, at the price of nice walks through nice places) and affording good exercise in the harvesting, sansai are organic, low-calorie and seasonal: the ideal food.

This time of year whenever I'm out on one of my meanderambles I find that my eyes are already automatically scanning the damp spring earth for early signs of the first sansai to show its face after winter: the piquant fukinoto (butterbur buds). I tasted a miso-pickled version (fukimiso) this winter that was just dynamite, and want to try to make some from the emergent hordes of fukinoto we find around here every year. (If you want the recipe, email me.)

These wild meadows are the perfect place for gathering fukinoto when it first peeps its pale jade-encased chick-yellow blossoms above the dull brown ground of winter's natural compost, and once you've spotted one fukinoto surprise you right away begin to spot the others emerging beneath the tangled carpet of last year's wildflower stems as your hunter's eye catches on, and soon you're heading home with a bagful of fragrant buds.

Then later comes fuki itself, the fan-like leaves of the same plant, whose stems make a crispy pickle. And not long after, into the new warmth comes taranome, the emperor of sansai, my eyes pick out the tall, thin, brown, viciously thorned stems (having seen what monkeys can do to trees with delicious leaves, I understand thorns much better) poking up here and there; my eyes also note how far along the bud development is. Timing is essential in sansai, and by that I mean getting there first, for soon the twos and threes and larger groups of folks from near and far will be coming here in the spring ritual of wandering around the mountains with baskets, harvesting nature's excellent produce.

We have special places where we pick our fukinoto and taranome and the many other varieties of sansai there are; such 'secret' places become kind of family heirlooms out in the country, like the best places to find matsutake (pine mushrooms). But of course it's best to live right in the wild neighborhood, as we do. I just got back from a fukinoto meanderamble this rainy morning, but it's too early yet. I'll put up some photos when it's time.