Inspirations and Daydreams

We’ve been back in Australia for almost two years now but there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think of how great it would be to head back to Japan. We do have plans to move back in the future but as we are eagerly awaiting the birth of our first child it won’t be for a little while yet.

I first became interested in vegetable gardening as a young child of about 10 (I believe) after a regular holiday trip to our house by my Scottish Grandmother. She immigrated to a farm plot in Bathurst, Australia from Scotland as a young Post-WWII wife and mother and knew the benefits and need to be semi-self sufficient in regards to the feeding of oneself.

Of course as a 10 year old boy I was mostly interested in getting muddy and playing with a few worms, but together we managed to set up a small veggie plot in which we planted corn, radishes, beans, beetroot, carrots, strawberries and a few herbs. I kept up the maintenance of my little garden after Nana had returned home but was always too impatient and picking things early. The veggie patch soon gave way to make room for a wooden half-pipe ramp and my newly found skateboard obsession though......

I never thought much about gardening from that point on although strangely I always maintained an interest in watching ‘Landline’ for some reason, which is a weekly Australian agriculture and farming programme and I later went on to University to study aquaculture. Stranger still, I developed quite a good pair of Blue Thumbs working in the aquaculture industry specialising in the growing of phytoplankton for use as live feed in hatcheries for the farming of prawns/shrimps for a number of years before heading up to Japan.

Japan is a country of contrasts on so many levels, not the least of which is the difference between the city and the country. I lived in Nagoya City (the third largest city in Japan) but one of my many jobs involved my taking a 40 minute train trip out of the city. Within 10 minutes on the train out of the city the concrete jungle gave way to rice fields and areas where just about every square metre of land that could be utilised to grow something edible was farmed.

My wife’s family owns a large orchard in Nagano where they commercially grow apples and pears and also watermelons, peaches and numerous vegetables for their own consumption. We would often take trips to Nagano during the various harvest times and help pick a few boxes of fruit.

Here we are in the family orchard in Nagano picking apples in Autumn and pears in Summer.

As a family we would also go on daytrips to surrounding farms during the year to partake in the eating of various fruits and vegetables. Here we are with our Nephew and Niece in Shizuoka gorging ourselves on strawberries.

Over time I started to feel a bit guilty returning to my city apartment and back to the life of a voracious consumer in Japan. On our return to Australia I was determined to get back into vegetable gardening even though I knew we would be continuing a life as apartment dwellers.

I think I’ve done alright so far with my little plot here on our balcony in Australia but I can’t stop daydreaming about a house in the country in Japan, getting down and dirty in a ‘real’ veggie garden and trading in my Blue Thumbs for a nice Dark Green pair!