Farmer Sachan and the Daikon

Introduction by Brian:

It saddens me, when I grant myself a pause to think about it; Sachan is a city slicker.  I mean she knows what a cow is.  But she has never had to dodge warm patties while running across a field.  She knows what a potato is, but has never had the thrill of walking up and down endless garden rows plantin’, hoein’ or diggin’ ‘em up.  Try as I might I just can’t get my mind around the idea of  roof top gardens.  I mean where I come from, you go down to the garden, out to the barn and up to the house.  Still, I reckon any garden is better than no garden.

Each year, the students at Sachan’s shogako plant and grow something different.  Earlier this year, Sachan’s class grew edamame – soybeans.  Back in the fall they planted daikon, a large white radish.  These are some of the pages from her weekly reports.  She has included an English translation.

Excerpts from Sachan’s daikon journal:

Daikon Journal

Today we looked at a real daikon seed with a magnifying glass.  The daikon seed was dark brown with white stripes.  It was a triangle.  It was hard.

Today we planted our daikon seeds in the dirt on the roof top garden of our elementary school.  The seeds we planted were red because they had something on them so bugs won’t eat them.

The leaves are starting to bloom.  The color of the leaves are green with a little yellow too.  They have some white and a little black in them too.  Each plant had four leaves.  We took out the three smallest plants and took them home.

It was really clear today and the daikon leaves are growing.  It looked like three different plants were growing at the same time.

The daikon was bigger than the time before.

We had homework today.  We had to go home and ask our mom for a recipe for fixing daikon.  Dad gave me the recipe for the daikon salad that Maeda-san fixed when we visited her in Osaka.  The recipe calls for daikon, an orange, salt, and canned ocean scallops.  Wash and peel the daikon.  Shred daikon and place in bowl, and sprinkle with salt, let rest.  Rinse and squeeze moisture from daikon.  Place in a bowl.  Break scallops into small chunks and mix with the daikon.  Squeeze juice from half of orange over the mixture.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

(Editor’s note:  The Maeda’s were Pam’s host family when she was an exchange student.  This isn’t exactly a traditional way to fix daikon, so I made sure Sachan included Maeda-san’s name in the title so sensei wouldn’t think the crazy foreigners had made this recipe up.)

The daikon has gotten even bigger.  It is bigger than the time before.  We were finally able to take the daikon out of the ground.

I love this picture:  Farmer Sachan, the proud farmer.  For the record, this was taken on the rooftop of her school.  In the distant background is Shinjuku.

This is a medium sized daikon that I picked up at the store the other day.  The  big ones can be nearly the size of my arm.