Sunday morning found us trudging through a good steady rain to the Earth Day Market in Yoyogi Park. We weren't sure exactly what we would find - if anything or anyone - but we'd been trying to get here since the Earth Day Tokyo 2009 event. A little rain wasn't going to stop us now! 
Damp yet enthusiastic vendors offered vegetables, prepared foods (mostly vegan and vegetarian), jams and preserves, handmade soaps and bath products, hand-dyed yarns, the biggest selection of millet I've ever seen along with sorghum and black rice, organic beer, seedlings, beans, honey, and cooking oils. Damp yet enthusiastic customers merrily jostled about with umbrellas to shop or chatted away while snacking at little tables under awnings.
We sampled an assortment of jams from both Tokotowa and Yokohama Honmoku, and wished we could have bought one of everything. Mouthwatering strawberry, blueberry, fig, and pear jams tempted us, and the tomato ketchup at Yokohama Honmoku would make Prairie Home Companion Ketchup Advisory Board proud. The flavored honey at Tokotowa drew us in, too, but we saved that one for the next time. (Delphine at Tokotowa gets credit for the title of this post, by the way.)
We bought udon noodles made from wheat raised at Mananouen, an organic farm run by a former commodities trader in Tokyo, carrot soap from azure soap, and black millet from Hitonigiri for our rice. Even though I get a veritable cornucopia of vegetables from the farm I work at here, I can hardly wait to visit the vendors again to try new things and see what else is in season!
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