jbisker's photostream

Here's me and my friend Yasu at a New Years party (see our warm sweaters?). It wasn't much of a new years party, but it turned out to be a fateful night all the same--here was where Yasu said, at the spur of the moment but quite sincerely, that I should come stay with him here in Imabari before going home to the states. Me? Return to Imabari? You must be joking! Right...?

This is Yasu's dad, our Otoo-san, holding out a (drum roll please...) a MIKAN! We Ehimeans are damn proud of our mikans (or clementines to you westerners), so getting brought back to the family's little orchard up on the mountaintop behind the house felt like being let into the club: I'm a true Ehime citizen now.

My new favorite vegetable. Going up the mountain to pick these is one of my favorite things to do, and the first time I went up with the family will be one of my favorite memories of this whole spring. Obaa-chan had this massive list of people she wanted us to send fuki out to, so Otoo-san and I collected some hundreds of them and Obaa-chan bound them up in bunches of ten with strips of discarded towel from the family's towel factory Fuki are these big long stalky things that grow more or less wildly and show up in pairs growing from a single root, each with a huge leaf on top. You have to cut them from just where the stalk comes out of the ground, using a knife, like Otoo-san, or a kama like me, and do it without harming the immature fuki sprout that is usually budding up between the shoulders of its two big brothers. Anytime anyone needs some fuki, I'm the man for the job.

My new favorite vegetable

Here's my new grandmother, Obaa-chan! She's doing something having to do with the potatoes we planted. Fertilizer? Who knows. I was in charge of digging the ditches and building up the mound to plant them in, and laying in the spuds. Obaa-chan was supervising, and doing, well, whatever the hell she's doing.