Friday, October 02, 2009

 

Sweet Potaoes Coming Out of our Ears

Pulling sweet potatoes is a right of passage for Japanese children. Most preschools organize a field trip and the kids get all dirty and bring home the fruits of their labor. My children's school offers them all kinds of wonderful opportunities, but sweet potato pulling is not one of them. I noticed a sign up at our local subway station advertising the chance to pull your own sweet potatoes, right in our backyard! I roped one of Sam's friends into the plan and we met at the station bright and early to try our hand at harvesting. I was so excited, you see, it was my first time too. I imagined the children tugging and pulling, laughing and falling back on their bums as they unearthed the precious potatoes, simultaneously realizing that that food doesn't come from the supermarket and that it takes labor to get it there. Well, when we got to the field, most of the work had already been done for us. All of the entwined vines and leaves that grow above ground had been chopped off and a small power shovel had come along each row and loosened the earth around the potatoes. The kids walked up to the stubs sticking out, lifted them up and watched the dirt fall off the sweet potatoes. Voila! Satsuma imo! The kids loved it, but I was ready to complain, what the heck?!? What happened to breaking a sweat?!?! It was so much fun for the kids and so easy that they kept pulling and pulling and in about 15 minutes we had two large plastic bags full of sweet potatoes. Stop! Stop! We have to buy these you know!!!! The price was right, 300 yen for one kilo, but we ended up with 10 kilos of sweet potatoes. TEN! I maybe buy five sweet potatoes over the course of fall and winter, what on earth and I going to do with 10 kilos! I think these farmers have a scam running. They make it easy, so you pull out 20 potatoes before you know what has happened. On the way home, the kids and I delivered sweet potatoes to several friends and neighbors. We gave half of the remainder of one bag to Jiji and Baba and the other half to Aunt Yoshiko. That still left us with more sweet potatoes than I have consumed in the entire time I have lived in Japan. We made sweet potato cakes, had them steamed in all their natural glory, cooked them cubed with the rice, Mina has had sweet potatoes in her lunch box everyday this week, sweet potato tempura and sweet potato fries. I am sweet potatoed out. Then, after school the other day, Mina's friend's mom tried to had me a bag of, you guessed it, sweet potatoes. Sweet lord.

Comments:
OMG. This is soooo funny. I was laughing hard. Great storytelling here! :-)

10 Kilos! 22 lbs of them versus 5 for the two seasons! HAHAHA!
 
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