I spent ten years of my childhood in an agricultural town in central Japan. Our house stood on the edge of a tableland overlooking carrot fields. In spring, the smell of freshly turned earth permeated the air, and soon, deep green leaves of the carrots turned into a swelling ocean. In summer, reflections of the intense sun on the transparent plastic sheet that covered the green houses below in the field sometimes surprised my sleepy eyes as I ate breakfast. This was the east side of the house, and east was where my primary school stood, in relation to my house. I walked through the carrot fields to and from school, occasionally picking mulberries along the way, until my purple fingers looked like an alien's. In early summer, when farmers pulled out and discarded smaller carrots to give room to the better-growing ones, I would pick up the small yet still good ones from the side of the fields and take them home. Though my friends from farming families didn't do this (most likely they had more carrots than they would ever wish to see lying around at home), I didn't think picking up discarded vegetables was a shameful act; to me, the small carrots slowly withering away in the afternoon sun were perfectly good food going unappreciated. I might still feel the same way. With berries to pick, carrots to find and nectar to suck, twenty minutes of walk twice a day, along the same route through the field, across an irrigation canal and up the last steep climb to my house was never a routine.

The scenery changed when I moved on to middle school. The middle school was to the north of my house, and most of the way there was residential. Beyond a railroad and a busy national highway and past a small, dark shrine, the way to middle school never felt as fun as the road to the primary school. I may not have paid as much concentrated attention to the surrounding, either, for I talked and talked and talked with a close friend as we walked from school together. With a good friend to share it, the world seemed to be much larger than the mulberry trees and carrot leaves. We trashed school policies, discussed politics as if we'd been cynical adults, lamented environmental destruction and exchanged our thoughts on books. As we immersed ourselves in the conversation, old houses and little rice paddies disappeared into the indistinguishable background. Until my friend made a turn at the national highway, I was oblivious of what was around me. In a strange way, thus, my memory is much more vivid between the highway and my house; the cracked surface of the pedestrian bridge, tall summer weeds swaying violently on the roadside as cars zoomed by, and the tiny corn field between the railway and my house.

The farmer who had that field must have been alternating his crops, for all sorts of vegetables showed up: taro, sweet potatoes, carrots, pumpkins, peas, and what I remember the most--corn. During the harvest season, the farmer would set up a small shack--more appropriately, a small shelf with a tin roof--by the green, erect stalks of corn and sold his harvest directly. I don't really know if that was a he or a she, because I'd never seen the farmer manning the shack; there was a tapper ware box with a slit on the lid to put coins in, and everyone left a few hundred yens in exchange for the sweet, plump corn cobs just cut in the morning. When I saw the corn shack on the way back from school, I would run to my house and told my mother. She then would grab her purse and walked up the hill to get the corn before that special sweetness evaporates into thin air. She would boil them immediately, and often the main fare of her dinner was that corn, just boiled with salt.

For a long time, I didn't understand the "corn as snack" or "corn as dinner" concept. It was tasty, but I didn't think it was good enough to replace my cookies and chocolates, or my spaghetti or curry and rice. I watched my mom sink her teeth into the thick, yellow stick, thinking of the prehistoric meat on the bone that troglodytes feasted on. When she ate corn this way, her eyes focused on the next row of pearly kernels to guide her teeth and her fingers tense from the pressure to hold the fat cob, there was a simple, child-like pleasure that emanated from her. While I almost envied her delight, simplicity of food didn't convince me. And I suppose that hadn't changed too much even now: I do enjoy less complicated good food much more now, but I still don't think I can be as happy as my mom was with a dinner of a corn on the cob. I can't help adding the "twist."

Supper on A Farmers' Market Day

Summer Festival Corn on the Cob

Corn on the cob is a ubiquitous summer festival food, sold in multi-colored tents with a long and narrow charcoal grill set in the front. The vendors roast the corn on the grill, occasionally brushing it with soy sauce. The soy sauce burns and adds a wonderfully earthy and nutty flavor to the corn, which I think perfectly complements the sweetness already in the kernels. To recreate this flavor, I often sautée the boiled corn in a bit of butter until the kernels show brown burn marks. Then, I sprinkle some soy sauce and let it burn a bit on high heat. You need to be careful not to set off the smoke detector (it can be pretty smoky, but that's what makes it so tasty), but a box fan in the kitchen window should be enough. Eating this festival corn transports me back, in time and space, to the rural Japan I grew up in--picking mulberries and all.