Don’t hurt your back

As I sit down to write my blog each week, I assess what was exciting, entertaining, or interesting during the past week. Over the course of this past year, I have relied on weekend entertainment, as weekdays consist mainly of cooking, cleaning, and watching Netflix. I am trying to stick close to home, which means there is a lot of redundancy in my life right now.

Three mornings a week, I have regularly scheduled phone dates with loved ones. I am meeting a girlfriend in the park once a week to exchange language lessons - half an hour dedicated to her English writing skills and half an hour dedicated to teaching me important kanji (which has been SO HELPFUL). Otherwise, I’m left to my own devices to find something to do.

The weekends bring a wealth of possibilities. Not because we are traveling places, but because my family is together and we have time to do whatever we want. We have always been the people with lots on our schedule. We like to explore and do interesting things. My husband is great at researching things to do. He looks at community bulletin boards, local newspapers, and websites to find out what is going on in the area. If something sounds interesting, he puts it in our calendar. It is as easy as that. If there are multiple things listed on that day, we can choose from those activities. We don’t have to do anything if we don’t feel like it, but it is nice to have options.

Sometimes this means we do “weird” things. I have reported on many of these random activities on this blog. But it is always in the spirit of having fun together. I often wonder what my son will say about his upbringing as an adult... hopefully something like “We used to do the weirdest things, but it was always fun!”

This past weekend, we participated in a Nerima tradition - a daikon pulling contest. All the daikon harvesting over the last month or so has helped us learn techniques in pulling this long radish. Don’t wiggle it too much, or you can break it. Hold it close to the ground, not up by the greens. Pull straight up. Use your legs, not your back.

We were out of the house by 8 am to bike over to the farm in Oizumi (about a 45 minute ride from our house) where the race was being held. We made sure to have all our paperwork, as this is a very popular contest that requires pre-registration. I heard it “sells out” on the first day every year.

I was impressed with the set up of tents, registration tables, and even portable toilets for the event. But after 14 years, the organizers really know what they are doing. Due to COVID, our temperatures were taken as we entered the field. Then we walked up to the registration table. After giving them our paperwork, we were handed a bib with a number, different paperwork, and a bag (which was a gift).

A small section of the field was roped off for kids to practice pulling daikon. We let our son try by himself, but it’s still pretty challenging. Nerima daikon (the variety we were pulling that day) can be over 1 meter long (3.3 feet). He’s not too much taller than that! It was a good activity for him, since many of the daikon from that day were being donated to the elementary schools for their lunches on Monday.

After he was done practicing, we stood around and waited for the event to begin. The Mayor of Nerima gave a short speech and then someone else walked the audience through a series of warm up exercises. While doing the stretches, I suddenly had a flashback to an episode of 20/20 from when I was a teenager (25+ years ago) where they were discussing Japanese company employees doing stretching exercises every day. These are known as taiso (tie-so) and are still popular today. School children do the routine daily. Anytime the taiso music is played, Japanese people automatically start doing the short routine as a Pavlovian response. But this one was a bit different, special for stretching backs and legs so no one would get injured while pulling.

It was time for everyone to line up based on their bib numbers. We were registered for the size contest, not the speed. A staff member instructed us to pull up to 10 daikon within a certain area (we could pick which ones) in 2 minutes. We let our son pick them and give them a little wiggle, then either my husband or I pulled it in quick succession.

After pulling our 10, we found the longest one and the heaviest, and took those to the recording table. Our longest daikon was 78 cm (31 inches) long. And the heaviest one was 4.1 kg (9 lbs). Neither of these broke any records, but it was fun participating regardless.

In another area, there was the speed race - how many daikon can a single person pull within a certain amount of time. Some of those people were so fast! Most were just having fun. Regardless, it was fun to watch.

As we departed, we handed in our bibs and they gave us 4 daikon as a parting gift. Although I have been getting really good at cooking dishes featuring daikon, we re-gifted 3 of the huge radishes to friends.

It was definitely a unique experience to participate in a daikon pulling contest. But it was also a lot of fun.


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Another daikon recipe my family really enjoyed...

Simmered Daikon with Pork

Ingredients
1/2 daikon, peeled and cut into large chunks (2 inch wedges)
100g (1/4lb) thinly sliced pork
3 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp sake
1 tbsp oil
3-5 green onions, cut into 2 inch lengths
1 knob ginger
1 tbsp mirin

Directions

1. Soak the pork in soy sauce and sake for 10 minutes. (I usually do this while I am preparing the vegetables.)
2. Heat a large skillet to medium, with the oil in the pan. Cook the meat until browned.
3. Add the green onion and ginger. Cook for 1 minute.
4. Add the daikon. Cover and simmer until the radish is transparent and can be easily pierced with a fork.
5. Toss in the leftover marinade and simmer over medium heat.
6. Sprinkle with mirin, coating the daikon and meat.
7. Serve.