We finished Service Project #1 - The Tokyo "Sumiyoshi" Neighborhood Garden

Part 1:

Our first project is completed. Today we planted a Japanese sized (read: small) planter bed garden in front of Come On Up shared house in the Sumiyoshi neighborhood of Tokyo. This involved selecting, buying, and carrying everything needed to grow our small plot on foot. We got soil, fertilizer, and plants from a market 10 blocks away. We pulled the loose grasses and roots and used them as a base fluff for building up space at the bottom of the pots for drainage and mulch. We mixed new soils and mulch with old, and planted our garden. Then we commandeered two flower pots that were left aside on the roof and planted extra cabbages in these. We used perennial plants which we had noticed in the neighborhood, purple flowers, a tiny white flowering shrub with blossoms scented with a spicy almost cinnamon aroma, and red and white ornamental cabbages. None of these plants will live long enough to offset a carbon footprint from the non-stop JAL flight from New York to Tokyo. However, you never can succeed if at first you don't begin somewhere. So, try, try again! The final step to our project was sweeping the street of all trash and spilled soil with an appropriately stooped small broom and dustpan. Japan is such a tidy and clean place we could have just as easily lost all the good will of our enterprising community service project by leaving a mess behind.

We are beginning a learning curve in terms of documenting our projects properly. We only have the 'after' to our 'before and after' images, therefore losing the power of transformation. Small project; but, with lots of lessons learned for the next one.

Part 2:

It could easily be said that another way we are always in service is our cultural ambassadorship for the United States, New Orleans, and our folks back home. As a chef from New Orleans, my whole adult life has benefited from being able to cook Creole, Cajun, Country French, Tex-Mex, BBQ, and, best of all, New Orleans food for people all over the world. Today at Tsukiji Fish Market we had a grand time admiring the fish, seafood, and crustacean of the freshest varieties from around the world. There was a beautiful grouper that I thought would make a fine cooked gift for our hosts New Year's party; but we settled on a kilo of oysters and some beautiful very large clams, (thinking the shells would make a nice addition to our tiny streetscape).

What else would make the perfect authentic New Orleans offering to a New Year's  party when you are trained in creole cuisine than our own holiday favorite, oyster artichoke soup? We bought our oysters and set off to the adjacent markets to find artichokes. Using our Point It book, we visited all the vegetable stalls we could locate and finally came to the conclusion that artichokes are rare in Japan in general and out of season, (or, out of stock?), during December. We found the rest of our ingredients at the Life supermarket in Sumiyoshi, but artichokes still unavailable, I am inventing a new oyster stew on the fly. The clams are steaming to be breaded and stuffed with an oily mayonnaise and pork fat base...

In the midst of our planning the greening of our small corner of the Sumiyoshi neighborhood in Tokyo, we started planning ahead to the subcontinent of India. Our friend Sara's family is from there and she offered to let us camp on her ancestral lands. We were looking on a Lonely Planet map for Amendnagar (where my great-great-great grandfather began the Maharashti Missions almost 200 years ago. Since we fly to Delhi, I looked for where these roads would meet and found a calling to go volunteer at Sevagram where Ghandi started his ashram dedicated to universal service in 1936. Here are the eleven vows that visitors are asked to live by there.

The Eleven vows of Ashram life at Sevagram

1. Truth (Satya)
2. Non-violence (Ahimsa)
3. Chastity (Brahmacharya)
4. Non-possession
5. Non-stealing
6. Bread labor
7. Control of palate
8. Fearlessness
9. Equality of all religions
10. Swadesi (the law of the neighborhood)
11. Removal of untouchability

When I visited Mumbai in 2007, I learned that my ancestors mission had brought a challenge to the courts that would remove the laws of untouchability whereby their religion, Christianity, would allow them to break bread and drink from the same vessel as the people they served. They also started women's colleges, medical teaching universities, and print press in Marathi.

The more we internalize and practice our collective benefits from service the better off we are.

When our family took Summer camping trips in my childhood my mother always had us search the woods around our site and pick up garbage, 'Always leave the campsite cleaner than you found it,' she says. This may be a mantra for our service. The first service project complete, we are off to Shanghai and seven weeks in China.

Do you know that Japan consumes most of the Tuna in the world year in and year out?

Want to see more pictures?

We have photos of Tuna auction, a tiny new green space, as well as many other travel photos at:

http://honeyserviceyear.shutterfly.com

(password is "travel")

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Traveling Green - Hard to stay on Mission with 'greening' our diets

We gave ourselves a few constraints to green our journey around the world. We are using only public transit wherever possible; except for our transoceanic flights we are sticking to rail and bus; we are planting to offset our carbons (our first project will be rebuilding a house planter with perennials and vines outside our 'home away from home here in Sumiyoshi). We also are planning to eat at least three days 'at home,' using non processed foods. This is difficult. Not only will we not always have a kitchen; but, as we have already found in Japan while shopping at our neighborhood markets, even the obvious changes when you are not familiar with language, character letters, or even what we think of as obvious (the bread section, the fruits and vegetables, the seafood etc).

By example of how sometimes normal foods can be turned on their heads, this morning I saw a sandwich filled with soba noodles and seaweed. Language is always a barrier (one that we have overcome before), but not knowing cultural morays can add the extra burden. We have persisted. Our only meal 'out' so far this week was a lovely Japanese version of egg foo yung which we had at a small neighborhood restaurant. Fresh ingredients, mushrooms, cabbages, egg mixture, tofu and very small flavorings of meat were presented tableside and our lovely host prepared them on the grill, set into the table. So we cooked and ate and it was local, unprocessed food at a tiny local family run community restaurant; but, we are not counting it as one of our three days of home cooking.

This idea comes from a lot of sources we have been studying lately. Have you seen the movie "Food Inc"? Or do you know that 'organic farming is not a mom and pop business but takes place at the same scale and usually right next to and with many of the same multi-national corporate giant practices as regular produce only substituting organic fertilizers and natural pesticides and pest eating insects for unnatural ones, but often at a cost of a higher carbon foot print? Too bad that the last time we tried to travel with Peanut Butter the TSA saw to it to take it away as it falls in some category of potentially explosive pastes!! Otherwise we would have carried a 1.5 kilo jar with us because - you know what - Peanut Butter, as it turns out, is a tool to save the planet!! Mom was right way back when. Unfortuantely, besides the Aussies and their Vegemite, paste sandwiches are not catching on in the rest of the world. (My sister Stella and her husband Peter, who have taken on a lovely duty of managing our Hotel Oso Perezoso in Colombia this year, practically buy out Carrefour when PB goes on sale in Santa Marta!!).

Other 'green' ideas we are reinforcing for ourselves in Japan are heat-on-demad water heaters (which we used already in South America), the human energy harnessing of community gardens, and bicycles as a primary source of daily transportation. we would also love to take home in our backpacks an eco version of the Japanese toilet - warm water bidet, flushing sound camouflage, apricot scented air freshner, and a warmed seat.

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