Don Weiss, American guy, sometimes a teacher, formerly a travel journalist and photographer, once upon a time coffee shop owner (American greasy spoon style), and longer ago once upon a time bureaucrat. I've lived in Japan off and on since 1990. I'm married to a Japanese woman. We have a cute daughter in 2nd grade. We live just outside Tokushima City, on the island of Shikoku -- which you can look up in Wikipedia and elsewhere.
Next, my location:
People who haven't lived in Japan have images of the country dominated by samurai, geisha, Kyoto, and Tokyo. Where we live is most emphatically none of the above, as you'll discover if you follow this blog. Japanese from the cities refer to areas like this as inaka, a word commonly translated as rural, though inaka can also refer to cities that lack the modernity (and overcrowding) of Tokyo. Tokushima City is, in Japanese terms, inaka, though it has a population of about 267,000.
Finally, the blog:
For the next 12 1/2 months, I plan to post nearly every day about what we're cooking, eating, and seeing in the fields and stores around us. Food is central to culture, and since food is one of my obsessions as well as a Japanese fetish (yes, I plan to document all of this), it stands to reason that a food blog can be a culture blog as well.
So for the next year, I'm going to document what we eat, at home, in restaurants, on picnics (including under the cherry blossoms), even at school. I'll take pictures of the food that grows around us in the fields since here, on the edge of a city, we're surrounded by rice, carrots, broccoli, and dozens of other crops. I'll take pictures and talk about what's in the local supermarkets (Mama's Store and The Big) and farmers' market. I'll show you what food ads look like (including the ubiquitous ads for Christmas cake and osechi ryori (for New Year's).
Bon appétit!
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