* This essay column is written by a longtime foreign resident of Japan.

Birds of a feather flock together. That's certainly true when it comes to tara-no-ki, which I've seen called devil's walking stick in English, and its horny, spiny, prickly and jaggy companions. Tara-no-ki looks like a spindly, emaciated palm tree -- albeit one with a trunk covered in thorns -- rising vertically from the ground for a few centimeters to a couple of meters.

The plant would be unremarkable were it not for the few fronds that burst from a large bud atop the "walking stick" in early April. This is the tara-no-me, the shoot of the plant. Picked just as it opens and before the thorns on the leaves harden, it's delicious as tempura. But, just as the recipe for bear stew reads, "First, catch your bear," you have to pick the tara-no- me and that entails fighting with the host of its well-armed neighbors.

Groups of devil's walking sticks can be found on steep, well-drained slopes at the edges of forests or on similar sunny open ground covered with brush. Areas where trees have been felled, such as under power lines in the hills behind my house in Doshi Village, Yamanashi Prefecture, and where the vegetation is growing back after having been cut down make perfect habitats.

But there are all these slashing, ripping, puncturing and restraining thorns to contend with on the bushes and vines surrounding the equally well-armed tara plants. After several long hikes in pursuit of tara-no-me, my hands, arms and legs look as if I've been trying to do something unsavory to a wildcat. But the subtle flavors of the shoots make it all worthwhile.

The first edible wild plant of spring is actually the fuki, or Japanese butterbur, which makes its debut in sunny spots just as the snow melts. The young round heads, called fuki-no-to, are highly prized as an ingredient of tempura, but I find them a bit too bitter to bother with.

Far more user-friendly than the tara, and equally tasty, are the shiitake mushrooms that emerge on logs in the same time slot in spring. I've seen them picked in the woods, but I've lacked the expertise and courage to tackle wild fungi. As one of my food books succinctly warns: "It may be tempting to gather wild mushrooms; however, a number of them are highly toxic, even deadly, and some of these are similar in appearance to edible mushrooms."

Russian roulette has no attractions for me: I prefer my mushrooms cultivated on oak logs in a shaded corner of my garden. They are simplicity itself to grow. You use a special drill to make holes of the correct dimensions in the logs then hammer in nameko, small wooden "bullets" impregnated with the mushroom spawn. The logs are then left upright in a shady spot and from the next spring you should be harvesting fresh mushrooms, which can be eaten straight away or dried for later use.

Early last April I drove 30 minutes over a high ridge to the Shinrin Kumiai ("Forestry Union") office in Tsuru-shi to purchase a plastic container of 500 nameko for 1,320 yen. This was the first time I had visited these premises as it was my wife, Keiko, who bought the "bullets" several years ago. While the woman clerk was writing out the receipt, she looked up and said, "It's 'David' isn't it?" Whereupon the youngest man working there commented favorably on my speed when running during the village sports day and the woman mentioned my middle son's rugby ability! I subsequently learned that the office was formerly in Doshi and when it was transferred to Tsuru-shi the employees went with it.

Yes, it's a small world, made even more so if you are a foreigner living in a village out in the Japanese countryside. It's far from being Big Brother, but everyone else and his or her dog seems to meticulously monitor your movements. Living in such an insular microcosm, you'd better not do anything you shouldn't! And that always provides me with more food for thought.

If you have any comments please e-mail me
at jtweekly@japantimes.co.jp .

The Japan Times Weekly: April 12, 2003
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