“Please come to school by 7:30 tomorrow. And bring rain boots. No, you don’t have rain boots? [Pause.] What did you do all winter? [Pause.] No, rain boots. They will get wet. What size are your feet? Okay, we will arrange something. [Pause.] Okay. See you tomorrow. Goodbye.”
The phone rings again: “Oh yes, and bring gloves. Yes. Bring gloves, and dress like it’s winter.”
Everyone preparing to divide and conquer
Thus commenced my foray into the foraging of funori, a type of carageenan seaweed that is described as a “jelly seaweed” when googled. It grows on rocks off the shore of northern Japan, and therefore is a specialty to this region. As you can see from the photos, it varies in color from dark purplish brown to bright orange, and can be short and skinny or long and balloon-fat. It’s particularly tasty added to a miso soup.
Lone little obaachan in the shallows
I arrived at school extra early on Thursday to get to the pickin’ site with the other teachers, and with enough time to set up a big fire barrel for the purposes of cooking our delicious ‘picnic’ lunch, and to wait for the students. Every year, the elementary schools in my town have a funori tori (picking) day, where students and parents alike volunteer. All the seaweed collected is cleaned and then either sold fresh or dried, with proceeds going to the school, typically raking in between $2-3,000. Think bake sale, but not.
A close-up of some long, orange specimens
The day was cold. In fact, it even snowed a bit. (Hello? April?) But the weather here moves so quickly that we were able to enjoy a few moments of sunshine now and again as we tromped around the shallows, scraping the rocks bare with our gloved hands, and shoving fistfuls of funori into baskets or large sacks tied around our waists.
Look at this cool new friend I found!
Potato and pork stew on the beach for lunch
After a hearty and delicious, warm lunch, the kids and most of the parents were sent home, while the teachers and a select few of the funori tori veterans went on to the processing station at the port in my town. There, we dumped in big cargo baskets of the funori into ice-cold water and washed it “clean” with rubber-gloved hands. Post-soak and -strain, we picked through it manually looking for bits of other seaweed, trash, or errant snails. In total, over the coarse of several hours, we harvest 350 kilograms of funori from the coasts of Kazamaura, destined for shops around the prefecture, and perhaps beyond. If anyone fancies a taste, for a small fee, I have considered starting an exporting business to broaden the plump little reaches of funori fingers the world over! And how delectable!
Washing/picking through the sea gifts
The end result
[...] in the inaka (rural Japan) is the emphasis on collecting and eating wild edibles, both from the sea and the mountainside. It was explained to me recently that Japan, as a whole, has a culture of [...]