Harrison Fuerst, Ehime
MIKAN WONDERLAND
WORKIN’ IN A 18
We Ehimeans love our citrus, it’s no secret. The simple fact that we enjoy going to the store to buy oranges should prove that. Words just can’t quite do justice to the local growing culture or the sheer variety of citrusy goodness on offer. Here in Ehime the shopping experience is more akin to gliding through farmers markets and down shopping aisles on a happy cloud, scooping up handfuls of dekopon, or ponkan, maybe an amanatsu or setoka, even a harumi or haruka with a nice bottle of kiyomi juice to wash it all down. Stop by the train station gift shop in our capital city of Matsuyama, and you will see that even Hello Kitty is an avid drinker of Ehime’s own POM mikan juice. Add to this the array of mikan liquors, sweets, treats and pastries that are made all over the prefecture and the possibilities for deliciousness are endless. But each morsel of mikan goodness has to make the journey from shrub to shelf, and the start of that journey for your mikans may very well be the wind-swept mountaintops of the Sadamisaki Peninsula. The countryside of Ikata covers the peninsula, and driving down the arterial road “Melody Line” (so named for its musical rumble strips) you’ll notice Shikoku’s only nuclear power plant and dozens of towering windmills amidst the forested mountains. In the little ferry town of Misaki, on the tip of the Ikata peninsula, a significant number of families have a hand in either the mikan or sweet potato trade. This rural community, like countless others that dot the length of Sadamisaki Peninsula, is a perfect example of Japan’s mesh of residential and commercial buildings on the coast, while the forested mountain terraces above are home to a complex network of narrow roads, monorail transports, and terrace plantations necessary for the harvest. My own students have recounted their life routines, dividing their time on weekends between tending the orchard and playing video games, while their parents take on any extra work they can after their day jobs as teachers or firefighters or nurses. The elderly, too seem always to be walking the streets with their karuikago (light basket backpacks made of woven bamboo). Having spent some time farming in China’s southern Guangdong province, I was determined to get my hands dirty and help work the mikan trenches. As luck would have it, I found a close ally in Misaki Middle School’s Social Studies teacher, Mr. Asano. Nestled within the terrace farming community named Hiraiso, the Asanos have built not only their home and a sourcing point for Ehime’s mikan industry, but also an international work-camp volunteer program they call The Kikuya Project 1. Beginning in February 2011, I was invited to come and learn the ropes of the mikan harvest with the Asanos, their friends, and a team of predominantly international volunteers. The workcamp volunteers had generally come through a website called NICE (Never-ending International work-Camps Exchange)2 or Volunteers for Peace3 and were a motley bunch: North Americans, Europeans, East Asians and Japanese folks from other cities. My farming acquaintances there have all come and gone, but there is always someone new, cooking and resting up for the next day’s work in the volunteer house which has been dubbed “Kikuya”. It is an aged and rustic wooden building perched at the top of a winding stone staircase overlooking most of Hiraiso. My own mikan work experience began early on a cold Saturday morning at the start of dekopon season as I pieced together my farming arsenal between sips of coffee: inari zushi packed lunch,
CULTURE
CONNECT November Issue 2013