It has been super busy lately, maybe because I am pretty slow, or not organized well. I usually hate when peopel say, "I am busy" but I feel like I have been saying this throughout this year. hanare is now part of Graffiti Research Lab Kyoto, and in Nov., Evan and James from GRL are coming to Kyoto to do lots of fun stuff with us. hanare's members with other Kyoto based groups are running around everyday to prepare for the events. Since there is no founding, no outside money coming in, everything is based on human network, typical youthful and perhaps Kyoto way of organizing. I know that we have to graduate from this organizing method, being so pankish, and skeptical about coorporating with a company or academic institution, for the fear that we might have to self-censor our activities and compromise our aim, especially when concepts are related to social and political issues. We obviously cannot go on like this and find a sustainable way of doing our project, which makes me think that this might be a last chance to it in this way, the last act of hanare's phase one.
Sep. 9th Today's Dinner - Curry pilav w/chiken - Pumpkin soup - Tabule with grilled vegetable - Local vegetable cooked with tomatoes
Sep.8th Today's breakfast - Rice - Miso soup with fried tofu and tofu - Rolled egg - Green salad w/Kabosu (Japanese lemon)
*We forgot to take pictures!
Hanare paper in Kutsuki vol. 03 2009. 09.09 Today's menu in detail. A percentage of locally produced ingredient in today's menu.
Pepper, produced in Kyoto Prefecture Onion, produced in Kyoto Prefecture Garling, produced in Kyoto Prefecture Eggplant, produced in Adogawa,Takashima-city, Shiga Japanese pepper, produced in Shin-asahi, Takashima-city, Shiga Sweet potato, produced in Shin-asahi, Takashima-city, Shiga Pumpkin, produced in Shin-asahi, Takashima-city, Shiga Kidney bean, produced in Mukugawa Takashima-city, Shiga Soymilk, produced and processed in the USA Couscous, produced in Tūnis Caned tomato, produced in Italy Olive oil, produced in Italy Kabosu (Japanese citrus), produced in Kyoto prefecture
[Today's Memo] Today, kitchen crew were busy working on the project in Kyoto. We have no interesting findings or interview to share with you.... Instead of writing the memo on local food culture, today we will introduce ourselves. Both Naho and I (Sakiko) run a collective called "hanare" in Kyoto. Here is an introduction of "hanare"
Started as a weekly café in 2006 and now entering its fourth year, hanare is a project space that collectively and dynamically searches out ways of realizing a better world, through the weekly coffee house project, "Kissahanare," workshops, lectures and political visual projects. It attempts to engage with the emergent social issues relevant to life today: food, art, politics, urban planning, cultural theory, farming, and more! hanare also works together with people from various fields who are experimenting with creative projects to find ways of practicing a new, spontaneous way of living. While hanare's work has its roots firmly in the local Sakyo district of Kyoto, it also wishes to be a space with direct links to other regional towns and cities in the world, and an independent place where critique and creativity are nurtured. hanare continues to expand its effort to be a 21st century social & cultural center.
Do you understand what we do? Yes? Even if you don't understand our activities, don't blame yourself. We have had many people asking us, "so what exactly do you do?" Our answer is, "we do everything!" We see that the problems apparent in Japanese society have a lot to with the fact that our life is fragmented and professionalized (don't take it personally, you guys are good professionals!) So we do everything from cooking food, organizing lectures/workshops, running a residency (Interesting People in Residency ) with Rad, making visual propaganda, making the dating service website dedicated to Israelis and Palestinians, collaborating with local farmers, and maybe making a day-care center for babies and old people in the future, who knows? Anyway, an important aspect of hanare's activity is not to go into one field, but going into as many fields as possible as amateurs. Our another slogan is "No, no, no we have nothing!!!" This title is what represents hanare's activity. We passed out a free paper at the hanare's 3rd year anniversary party. In a process of preparing texts for the paper, we came up with this title, "San-nai Undo," meaning that hanare's activity is all about turning a very negative condition, "no money, no land, no profession" into a positive one. It sounds so hippy... (we are not bunch of hippies!) Though what I like about this condition is that it automatically forces us to work with people collectively no matter what project we are engaging. I guess, realizing our limitation kind of opens up a new possibility for creating a network of people from a diverse spectrum. As proud multitude, we need to take advantage of a very negative condition and turn into a good thing, which is to connect people and create a human network.
Sep. 8th Today's Dinner -Rice bowl with sauteed fish cakes and with vegetable toppigs - Sauteed shishito (peppers) with Jako (small dried fish) - Suteed bittermelon with tofu, egg, and locally produced chicken - Soumen soup with scarlion
[Today's menu in detail. A percentage of locally produced ingredient in today's menu.
Trip to A-COOP]
Ingredients: Rice, produced in Mukugawa, Takashima-city, Shiga Aji (too lazy to find out English name), comes from Obama, Fukui prefecture near Shiga Goya, (bittermelon), produced in Shin-asahi Takashima-shi, Shiga, precisely by a farmer, Kikue Shimizu, Shishito (Japanese pepper), produced in Takashima-shi, Shiga, precisely by a farmer, Miyoko Shimizu, and in Kyoto prefecture Chirimen jako (small dried fish), produced in Hyogo prefecture Tofu, in Imazu Takashima-city, Shiga, precisely by Aoyama Food company ※Despite that this product is produced nearby, its main ingredient, soy beans come from the US and Canada. ※Soy beans are non-GM if we believe the company Egg, produced in Kutsuki, Takashima-city, Shiga
Soy source, produced in Nagasaki prefecture Milin (sweet cooking wine), produced in Saitama prefecture Sesame oil, produced in Shimane prefecture Salt, produced in Kyoto Suger, produced in Tanegashima, Kagoshima prefecture
[Today's Memo] Today, we took a short trip to A-COOP again. A-COOP is a local supermarket in Shin-asahi, that has "local farmer's produce section" by the entrance. Farmers nearby individually come to the supermarket to drop off their vegetable and flower in the morning with the prices they decide. This "local farmer's produce section" started 16 years ago, according to the manager, Katsurada-san. Having "local farmer's produce section" at big supermarket chains is recently in fashion all over Japan, based on the idea, "Chisan-Chisho," meaning that people should consume the food produced in their surrounding areas. Many supermarkets therefore are pushing this "regional character" more and more to meet consumers' request and make more profit, of course. The section at A-COOP started 16 years ago, which as far as I know, is very early. Katsurada-san said, "they are all small farmers who make 2-3 vegetables, so there is less variety, and sometimes they all bring the same vegetable over and over again." In fact, today, we saw only 10 kinds of vegetables on the shelf, about 20-25 farmers, more or less bring the same produces. "The good thing of this "local farmer's produce section is that all the vegetables are cheap because they are all seasonal vegetables and give consumers a feeling of safety. Every morning, shoppers first check out the section located just by the entrance and then move to a conventional vegetable section," he said. He also mentioned that all the meat comes from Shiga prefecture although "Made in Shiga" sign was not in sight, as opposed to vegetable, all of which have names of a prefecture. I guess it' got to do with the national agriculture regulations that have different standard on vegetable and meat. Today, there is no conclusion but a conventional supermarket like A-COOP is at least trying to include the products that are not included in the national distribution network, but its attempt is still limiting, considering that roughly 70 percents of what the supermarket sell is processed food, who knows what ingredients are.
hanare @ Kutsuki Day 2
2009.09.07
Sep. 7th Today's Dinner -Onigiri - Japanese rice balls -Soumen - Japanese rice noodles with toppings, mushrooms, egg, age (fried tofu) -Fried eggplant and age (fried tofu) with mushroom broth - Wakasagi fritt
Sep. 7th Today's Breakfast -Breakfast pound cakes (Chocolate, Lemmon, Rum raisin, Orange marmalade, Carrot ) -Potato salad with chickpeas and cucumber.
Using our spare time, we made hanare paper that connect our role of cooking for the conference members with local food culture. I guess hanare's speciality is to create more work by ourselves with no money.... We put it on each table to accompany our food. hanare paper in Kustuki vol.01 2009. 09.07 Today's menu in detail: A percentage of locally produced ingredient in today's menu. How local are our ingredients?
Ingredients: Rice, produced in Takashima-city, Shiga Somen (thin rice noodle) , produced in Nagasaki prefecture Shitake (Japanese mushroom for making broth), produced in Kyoto precisely Naho, chef's home Eggplant, produced in Takashima-shi, Shiga, precisely by a farmer, Fumie Adachi Age (Fried Tofu), in Adogawa Takashima-city, Shiga, precisely by Kurimoto Food company ※Despite that this product is produced nearby, its main ingredient, soy beans come from the US and Canada. ※Soy beans are non-GM if we believe the company Egg, produced in Kutsuki, Takashima-city, Shiga Wakasagi fish (sorry, English name not known), comes from the lake Biwa, Shiga Soy source, produced in Nagasaki prefecture Milin (sweet cooking wine), produced in Saitama prefecture Suger, produced in Tanegashima, Kagoshima prefecture
[Today's Memo] We are the ones in a kitchen, we make everyday meal for everyone. Hello! We sort of participate in this conference, by way of cooking, but we sort of don't, like everyone. To say good-bye to our laziness and shyness that we hide in the kitchen, from today we have decided to make a small theme for each menu and be a little bit more playful with food and local food culture. Oh, don't expect us too much, only if we have enough time in-between cooking, going to picnic in the morning, exploring local plants, playing with a card, and drinking coffee, tea, and hot wine at night!!! Anyway- today's theme is to examine how local our ingredients are. Yesterday, when we were out for buying food at a local super market in Shin-asahi, we learned that local products we have access to are pretty limited; in fact even the food that is known as a Shiga's speciality, comes from a different prefecture. Because organizers of this conference had previously asked us to use local ingredients as much as we can, we were more careful with our buying selection. The local products available to outsiders are, we found out, several kinds of vegetable and some processed food (we are excluding fish and meant since they are pretty expensive to include in everyday menu). Through this shopping trip and our conversations afterwards, the following questions came to our mind. Are we able to give up desire to have variety of food on a table, and willing to eat only locally produced food as much as possible to show solidarity towards farmers and local people we have contact with during the conference? Or should we set up a minimum percent of Shiga produced ingredient in in each meal? Or what should we do? How do we treat the soybeans from the state but processed here? We have to make a shopping trip to a super market every 2 days or so, meaning that depending on your suggestion we can change everyday menu. So feel free to come up to us, and let us know your thoughts on how we make a decision in the remaining days. To be continued...
Our first day in Kutsuki. After taking a shopping trip at a local food store and supermarket, we arrive at Kutsuki in the afternoon. We cooked a curry dish and pumpkin salad and said hi! to API (Asian Pacific Intellectual) fellows, researchers form South Asia, and Japan. We are asked to cook 2 meals a day for the researchers while using local foods. Usually we prepare for 10 people at Kissahanare, but simply making the portion three times more does not work. People eat a lot here, and I guess it's a good thing.
hanare will be closed on Sep. 7th due to our food catering work at Mukugawa, kind of middle of nowhere in Shiga where antholopologist from Asia and Japan will have a conference. We are looking forward to having life without internet or cell phone reception.....
8/31 Today's Menu
2009.09.02
○ジャガイモのボタージュ ○茄子とチキンのトマト煮込み ○ご飯
All the regulars gathered at Kisssahanare tonight. I always wonder if there is any telepathy among them. Once in a while, all of them gather at the same day without contacting each other. Weird. Our conversations on religion started from my experience in Israel where many people were astonished by the fact that I never had god(s) in my life. Yes, I am godless. For some people I guess it's hard to believe that I have no super power above me to talk to and consult. But for godless people like me, it's hard to imagine to have god(s). The conversation went to a funny direction when Mr. Takeuchi came by with a present, a small cake, from this Japanese shrine that worships a penis!!! A shape of the cake is... I don't have to explain it here. .. People who have problem conceiving, or want to have many children supposedly go there and touch the penis. I really like this kind of relaxed, comical worshiping style, thinking that many religion considered sex as sin. All of us ate few penis cakes while making a joke that we will get pregnant!!!