Lately, i have been reading articles on Byliner. It is good that I can read my favorite writers on the website. Sometimes I feel some writings are difficult to understand or take time to comprehend what they are trying to say because of my poor English. But I still enjoy reading especially things about food.
I am following Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman and other writers who write things about food. I have read several articles from Pollan's page and Bittman's page. When I was reading Cooking solves everything by Bittman, I started to remember farmers' markets in London and other cities outside Japan. I used to go to Borough Market in London almost every weekend to get some fresh fish and interesting vegetables there. Occasionally, I ate raw oysters and enjoyed coffee from Monmoth coffee. Although the market is a kind of tourist attraction, it is really enjoyable and it can be easily the most memorable place for many who visited or lived in London. I happened to find a description about the market when I was reading a book Hungry city How food shapes our lives. As long as I can remember, the book is kind mentioning that renovating the market was a part of a vigorous city planning of London. I think the Borough market is now a good example for many cities, showing the importance of power of food to gather people and liven a city through it. When I went to Copenhagen I went to a kind of similar market which contains many shops specialized in danish pastries, smoked fish, and so on. I always love to go to a market in a new town and even a supermarket since they can show me a good deal of real status of people and life.
After I came back from London, I tried to find good food markets in Tokyo and found a few options. First, I went to a farmers' market in Aoyama with my mother. I found products like homemade pickled, vegetables, fruits, and kind of interesting homemade stuff. But at the end, I found myself hugely disappointed by the fact that I never felt `farmer' at the market and displays were just sooo clean! It was just like a concept of farmers' market and I could see people's attempt to imitate `farmers markets' seen all over the market.
And then I paid a visit to Tokyo Earth Day market a few weeks after. I also did not like it somehow. I felt that in Japan a concept or purpose comes first before actual demand or desire catches on among people. It seems to me that people engaging in the movement are trying to persuade us to be `eco-friendly' or conscious consumers at the end of the day. I think this is the most evident and unique difference between markets in many western places and markets in Japan.
However, I have my favorite markets actually. One of them is Chisan-marche 地産マルシェ. The shop has several brunches in tokyo and it is getting popular among middle－aged housewives or more older people. The shop sells various kinds of vegetables from many small scale farmers around Tokyo year around. Chisan literally means locally produced, so each product has a grower's name and place where it is produced on a label. I always love to go there since it's cheap and vegetables taste really good. So I guess people's desire to eat fresh and safe vegetable can be seen at the shop and it gives me a kind of similar feeling as I was at a market in other countries. The alternative food movement is, I think, universal but it emerges in varied styles or ways. This kind of thing really fascinates me.
Oh it's lunch time.
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