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Kanako Watanabe and Kaoru Kimura at the Sakae Mura table. |
This past weekend, though, found me searching out one particular booth. Kevin and Tomoe, our friends over at One Life Japan, mentioned their village sponsored a table there where Tomoe's most yummy bread would be for sale. I was on the train in seconds flat. Here's the story of what I found.
Once a month Kanako Watanabe heaves boxes of fresh vegetables, rice, homemade bread, tomato juice, and whatever else Sakae Mura, the village in Nagano Prefecture that she now calls home, can offer up into her vehicle and begins the four-hour drive to Tokyo. Mountains and fields roll by as buildings slowly get taller and the space between them gets ever smaller. She arrives at the United Nations Farmers Market around 9am to start setting up her table. Joined by a friend or two, she'll restock the table, chat with visitors, and (hopefully) drive back with mostly empty containers for company at the end of the day.

The NPO also hopes to attract new people to the village where 70 is the average age. By promoting economic opportunity and show-casing themselves in larger venues, the village hopes to catch the eye of people looking to get out of the city, to try their hand at something new. Buy some zucchini (beautifully shaped and dark green, by the way), a loaf of organic bread (made using organic whole-grain brown rice), and next thing you know you're moving out of hot and stuffy Tokyo to a quiet village in the mountains of Nagano to try your hand at farming and developing a killer jam recipe.
Sounds reasonable to me, but then I'm a geek like that.
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Look for this sign at the UN University Farmers Market |
Meanwhile, head on down to the UNU Farmers Market in August (watch for the schedule here!) and ask at the information booth for the Sakae Mura table. You'll find reasonably priced vegetables, rice and other nifty things, and who knows? Maybe next time you read this blog it will be from a little village where monkeys pester, terraced rice fields dominate the landscape, and the snow will be up to your roof!
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