Clothing, eating, and housing. Kero-chan creates various categories of living with her own hands and welcomes people into her home. She clears wasteland, sews clothes, grows vegetables, and cooks. Kero-chan is exactly what the Japanese call a peasant.
One afternoon, she brought me a cup of tea and a mango, or made me a snack of coconut milk and glutinous rice, and over the past week, my mind has been filled with unforgettable sips of memory. Morning porridge, mushroom chimaki, fried rice, coconut milk soup, fried tofu, papaya salad.... At each meal, vegetables, herbs, and spices create a brilliant symphony in my mouth, tapping into the untapped senses that lie dormant in my brain.
Eating has many roles besides filling your stomach. And, food is not just a binary choice between tasty and tasteless. After tasting on the tongue, we feel it in our internal organs, and through our blood we feel it throughout our body. We feel the soil in which the vegetables are rooted and the love of the person who grew and cooked them by touching them inside our bodies. The most important thing is to have a good feeling in your stomach after eating. Beyond the mere taste of good or bad, there is a whole range of sensations, including up and down, of how much you have extended your sense of touch to the universe and the earth. And the feeling of a good postprandial belly always comes later, after the sensation on the tongue. Beyond the joy of a full stomach, the same kind of joy that one feels when vegetables that have absorbed a lot of energy from the sun and the earth take root in one's body.
Kero-chan was not just a cook, but also a person who understood and practiced an eco-system that is good for both people and soil. In Japan, “farm-to-table” still gives the impression of a concept that is reserved for high-end restaurants like Fine Dining, which is something amazing, but what Kero-chan was doing was something from a more everyday perspective that anyone could imitate. I was amazed because she has been welcoming people within her reach for 20 years. Of course, there are some heavy jobs that Kero-chan can't do alone, but when that happens, she gets help from volunteers and local people. She works in the fields surrounded by nature, cooks, and sews with her cats. Watching Kelo, I felt a sense of jealousy toward her lifestyle.
