I Want to "Eat the Weeds"

I am originally from the Ashio Copper Mine in Tochigi Prefecture (now Nikko City). During the Taisho era, about 38,000 people lived there, and it was very prosperous. I was a junior high school student in 1973 when the mine closed. The population, which was about 10,000 at the time, is now around 1,500. Growing up in those mountains, I used to play in the hills behind my house in the spring, picking wild vegetables like royal fern, bracken, mountain udo, and hosta.

You grew up surrounded by rich nature.

That's right. My mother would praise me when I picked a lot of wild vegetables, and we would dry them to eat during New Year's.

My specialty is fossil research, and when I was a student, I went to the Makino Botanical Garden on Mount Godai (now the Kochi Prefectural Makino Botanical Garden) for a survey. I stayed there for several days, and one day, the staff members were having a wild plant tempura party and invited me to join.

They were eating Japanese knotweed, mugwort, and dandelions found nearby. I didn't think wild plants could possibly taste good, but when they told me to try some and I took a bite, I remember being truly moved by how delicious they were.

So that was your first experience eating wild plants.

Yes. Because of that encounter, when I started working at the Yochisha Elementary School, I introduced a wild vegetable tempura curriculum at the Highland School. Every year, Yochisha students go to Tateshina (Nagano Prefecture) for 6 to 9 nights to learn about nature. Children raised in the city are skeptical of wild plant tempura at first, but once they try it with a sprinkle of salt, they can't stop. It has become a regular part of the curriculum and has continued for nearly 30 years since 1995.

I work as a mountain guide in Nagano Prefecture, but I was born and raised in the city in Tokyo. After graduating from university, I worked for a company in Osaka, but city life and corporate work didn't suit me. I quit after a while and moved to Otari Village in Nagano Prefecture. It's a treasure trove of wild vegetables. When the locals taught me, I found that starting with butterbur sprouts in the spring, you can pick all sorts of things. Until the beginning of summer, it was a culture shock to realize you could almost survive without even growing vegetables.

That sounds like an enviable environment.

There, I felt deeply the importance of obtaining the means of survival from nature, and I expanded my activities beyond wild vegetables to mushroom hunting, fishing, and hunting. When I drink spring water while guiding a mountain climb, even people born and raised in Nagano are sometimes surprised. I feel that modern people have become distant from nature. I guide people thinking that providing an opportunity to reconnect with nature and passing down how to interact with it is a way I can help improve society.

I also grew up in the city, having lived in Kawasaki all my life. When I was young, my grandfather often took me to the nearby mountains, where we played by picking wild vegetables. Once, he told me to look for fatsia sprouts (tara-no-me), and everything I picked turned out to be raspberry sprouts. They look similar, so I got them mixed up. Fatsia sprouts used to be common in Kawasaki back then.

I am currently conducting research to clarify natural and biological phenomena, and I think the reason I went into the sciences was largely due to looking at illustrated field guides as a child. I would work hard comparing the guides with the real things to see if a plant was edible. Once I learned the names and characteristics of plants, I started wondering if they were toxic and became interested in knowing their chemical components.

My family currently lives in Chikuhoku Village in Nagano Prefecture, but even as a couple, our personalities are different. I'm more suited to gathering wild plants, vegetables, and mushrooms, or catching fish and game, while my wife seems to find farming more enjoyable. It's like a Yayoi person and a Jomon person living together (laughs).

Are you completely self-sufficient?

It's not quite that simple. It's more like I enjoy the benefits of the market economy while also knowing the importance of gathering or growing food for myself.

My dream for the future was also self-sufficiency. It hasn't come true, though (laughs).

I also love picking wild vegetables. When spring comes, I generally know where everything is. Royal ferns are over here, bracken and mountain udo are over there. A place where mushrooms grow well is called a "shiro," and as a child, I knew so many wild vegetable spots and mushroom shiro that I was called a master of wild vegetable picking.

Even on a mountain you're visiting for the first time, you get a sense that a certain plant might be there based on the atmosphere, right?

I can tell instinctively based on the direction the mountain faces or the level of dryness. It's not based on scientific evidence; it's just that I've been picking them since I was a child, so I just sort of know.

But mushrooms have always been scary to me. We go to the Highland School in the spring and autumn, and in the autumn, we study mushrooms. The students collect and sketch them, but I never let them eat them like we do with wild plants and vegetables.

I also studied mushrooms when I was a student, but I was too scared to ever eat them. In my research, there were cases where two mushrooms that looked indistinguishable had completely different chemical components.

My mother apparently almost died from mushroom poisoning before I was born. In a region where brick caps and honey mushrooms are staples, she apparently ate a sulfur tuft by mistake and suffered terribly for a week. I tell that story to the students. I tell them that while these two look similar, one is delicious and the other is deadly poison. I teach them that you must never judge a mushroom yourself to eat it, and you shouldn't give them to others or accept them from others either.

Mushrooms are truly difficult because they look the same to an amateur.

When I look for edible mushrooms or wild plants, I always make sure to identify the key points that distinguish them.

At the Highland School, I have the students pick mugwort, but the leaf shape is similar to monkshood. Even though I warn them thoroughly that mugwort is very hairy while monkshood is hairless with broader leaves, occasionally a student will still pick monkshood. Because of that, I seriously check every single leaf before frying them.

When I was a child, I went to collect the seven herbs of spring. I thought something by the roadside was henbit (hotokenoza), but I later found out it was nipplewort (koonitabirako). Nothing happened when I ate it, but I was shocked when I looked it up properly later and found out that the plant actually called henbit is toxic.

The fly agaric is known as a poisonous mushroom, but it actually has a strong umami flavor. A friend of mine wanted to taste it and put a little in his mouth, intending to spit it out. However, he was overcome by the deliciousness and swallowed it. He said he went to "the other side" for a bit... the happy side of the world, that is (laughs).

I feel that tempura suits wild plants with strong harshness (aku). I can see why the Yochisha students say it's delicious. Fatsia sprouts have thorns, but they're delicious as tempura. Wild rocambole and daylilies are good blanched or with vinegared miso.

Simmering them or making overnight pickles is also good.

I also recommend tsukudani (simmered in soy sauce). As a child, I ate Japanese pepper and butterbur that way. However, children might not like tsukudani. I teach the students that wild vegetables have five tastes: sliminess, harshness, acidity, plainness, and bitterness. Even when I tell them to compare and observe, they say they all taste the same.

It seems best to eat wild plants in the spring. I've heard that bears eat such things after hibernation to excrete accumulated waste. Since humans also tend to stay indoors during winter, we might still have an instinct to flush out accumulated toxins.

I feel like my stomach was stronger back when I was eating wild plants. Maybe the gut bacteria were different. Even now, I occasionally pick soft mugwort leaves and make mugwort mochi in the lab.

At Yochisha, I wish I could incorporate the plants growing on the school grounds into science classes and let the students eat them, but it's difficult for various reasons.

That's true. With economic growth and urbanization, it has become harder to eat plants by the roadside.

It's difficult in the city now. I think going into the mountains and experiencing it is truly educational. It's a study of biology, chemistry, and even home economics.

Mr. Tamura, before you moved to Nagano Prefecture, had you ever lived a semi-self-sufficient life?

I was completely unrelated to it. All I remember is my grandmother in the countryside making grasshoppers into tsukudani. Until then, although I knew as knowledge that dandelions were edible, I never tried it in practice. Deciding to move to Nagano might have been the awakening of a more fundamental animal instinct rather than a human one (laughs).

Did the locals in Otari Village teach you how to eat wild plants?

Yes. When I first started living there, I didn't know anything; even when shown ostrich ferns (kogomi), I was so ignorant I'd ask if they were bracken. From that state, I had the old men and women show me where to pick them, and when they served me pickles or simmered dishes, I would ask how to make them. Since I love cooking, picking wild plants becomes even more fun when I prepare them myself.

Do you cook the wild vegetables and plants yourself, Mr. Tamura?

Yes. The thing I'm most grateful for inheriting from my mother is the ability to cook.

That's nice. I'm not very good at it (laughs).

Preparing wild plants and vegetables is a lot of work. Unless you like cooking, it's quite a task... For horsetails (tsukushi), even the prep work of removing the sheaths is time-consuming, and the spores turn your hands black. If you boil them too long and the volume shrinks, you just think, "Oh, man..."

Removing the strings from butterbur or the fuzz from royal ferns is also very difficult, isn't it?

Yes. It's a long road until you get to eat wild plants and vegetables deliciously. I think it's very good for children's education, though.

Recently, my child has grown a bit, and we pick wild chives and daylilies together near the house. They can't yet sort what they've picked or keep dirt and dead grass out to make it easier to cook later, so it's still faster to do it by myself (laughs).

You have to train them (laughs).

That's true. But it's great as a game that parents and children can enjoy together.

It's also important to pick them when they're at their best for eating. You want to pick them while they're still soft. Once fatsia sprouts get big, the thorns are painful.

That's right.

Conversely, there are cases where you decide to wait and pick them after they've grown a bit more.

Like thinking, "If I wait a bit longer, I can increase the edible portion." For tawny daylilies (yabukanzou), the white part buried in the soft center is delicious. For wild rocambole (nobiru), you want the bulbous part to come out when you pull it up. You need those kinds of tips, like picking from places where they're easy to harvest.

Mr. Tamura, you have a collection of wild vegetable recipes published online.

They aren't really much of a "recipe," but interest in food seemed to increase when the pandemic started. I was asked to write them because more people were interested in the edible wild plants around them. I just made them using things found nearby, so it's just a bit of fun...

For that, the variety is incredibly rich. It's like an illustrated recipe book.

I made them using truly common roadside plants rather than what you'd typically call "wild vegetables."

It's also helpful that you explain not just the cooking methods but also how to remove the harshness.

I also used to pick wild plants with the mindset of cooking with whatever was around. I'd work hard to collect a lot of horsetails and such. But the downside of wild vegetables and plants is that they shrink so much when you boil them.

Exactly. Chives and licorice root shrink down too. Even if you harvest a lot, once you cook them, you're left with... just this little bit.

I remember harvesting a lot of royal ferns in the past, but I was so disappointed when they shrank significantly after drying.

If you only harvest a small amount, it might not end up being a satisfying portion after parboiling and prep. It ends up being more trouble than it's worth.

On the other hand, harvesting too much is also a struggle. There were nights I was almost in tears while doing the prep work (laughs). Peeling butterbur and elatostema is so much work that I'd regret picking so much (laughs).

I understand. When there's a lot of it, you just can't help but want to pick it all.

When I was little, I used to pick a little bit of many different kinds, and my mother would scold me. She'd say, "Pick only one kind!" because the boiling, frying, and prep methods are different for every wild plant.

When making wild plant tempura, if I teach the students that Japanese knotweed has a sour taste or that bracken has a slimy texture, some of them can really perceive that. Most didn't realize that the plants around them were edible, so I think it's a valuable experience for them to find that something they thought would be bitter is actually delicious.

I have the impression that Keio Yochisha students are raised very carefully, so I imagine they all have quite delicate palates.

Actually, the children are quite wild. They use chopsticks at first, but if you look away, some start eating with their hands. And they devour the tempura at an incredible pace as soon as it's fried.

It's certainly educational to go through the whole process from harvesting wild plants to cooking and eating them. Not just for the taste, but also in the sense of receiving something that was living right there.

This is a bit off-topic from wild plants, but when I first moved to Nagano, I was struck by how intense the flavor of the vegetables was. I think the impact of the flavor is different between cultivated vegetables and wild plants.

That's true. For better or worse, the flavor of wild mountain vegetables is very strong.

There is a farmer nearby who grows edamame and sells them with the roots still attached. When I cut off the roots and boiled them on the branch, they were so flavorful they didn't even need salt.

No salt at all?

They are that sweet. Since then, I never put salt on edamame. In fact, you shouldn't. Fresh vegetables are more delicious than you'd imagine—it's enough to make you feel like you've been deceived before.

The elementary school in my village has its own school lunch kitchen, but apparently, the local vegetables have such a strong flavor that the students don't want to eat them, so they source vegetables from Hokkaido instead.

That's such a waste.

Right? It makes me wonder what the point of food education is.

I wonder if they don't use local ingredients much at home.

Since many people have lived there for generations, I think they eat vegetables grown nearby by relatives and neighbors. However, until their sense of taste is fully developed, things with strong flavors, harshness, or bitterness might be hard to eat. In our house, we consider that part of their education, so we make sure they eat them. My kids love cucumbers and tomatoes, though.

You can grow cucumbers and tomatoes yourself, and the intensity of the flavor in fresh ones is very clear. The taste when you take a big bite of something freshly picked must be exceptional.

While there is some concern about contamination from pesticides and fertilizers, I think the soil and water are fundamentally different.

In the old days, people said it was because they were exposed to the sun. Nowadays, they grow things like sterile lettuce indoors under lights in plant factories. It's good that there's no insect damage, but it feels a bit tasteless.

There is a biotope on the Yochisha grounds that serves as a small nature garden, and the types of wild plants there have changed between when I started 35 years ago and now. Do you notice such changes around Nagano?

I've only lived in Nagano for about 10 years, so I haven't noticed that much. Does that mean ecological succession is progressing?

It's not succession; the types of grass are changing because invasive species are coming in. At Yochisha, many beautiful flowers like long-headed poppies, Mexican fleabane, and Carolina cranesbill bloom in the spring, but those are all invasive species. They weren't there at all when I first started. These changes in plant life are happening at an incredible pace.

The transition might be more drastic in the city center. Kawasaki has changed steadily as well. I feel like dandelions have decreased quite a bit.

In the past, when we talked about dandelions, there were Japanese dandelions and Western dandelions. We were taught that Western dandelions are characterized by their reflexed (bent back) bracts, and that Japanese dandelions were becoming fewer because they were weaker. Now, conversely, I don't see pure Western dandelions anymore.

Can you still see Japanese dandelions at Yochisha?

I think it's full of hybrids. You think it's a Western dandelion, but the way the bracts bend back varies. Then you wonder if it's a Japanese dandelion, but that seems doubtful too.

I believe Japanese dandelions bloom in the spring while Western dandelions bloom year-round. What about the hybrids?

I feel like the hybrids bloom pretty much year-round.

So they bloom year-round but look like Japanese dandelions.

Yes. They look like Japanese dandelions. Well, they're both edible, so it's fine (laughs).

Well, in terms of eating them, I guess it's not a big problem (laughs).

Dandelions are popular with the students. When we make tempura out of the flowers, everyone is surprised by how delicious they are.

Many plants in the Asteraceae family are edible. Even in the countryside, it depends on the level of urbanization, but I feel like Western dandelions are common in the center, while native dandelions remain in the more remote villages.

Violets, which I was obsessed with for a while, are also plants that change rapidly. There are invasive-looking ones, and you can also see rare white flowers. There are very dark-colored ones too; they are quite diverse.

Even if you expect a certain color of violet to bloom in a certain spot in the spring, they change constantly in the city, and you realize there's quite a lot of variation. I think the transition is particularly rapid near rivers, the sea, or in places with a lot of foot traffic.

Actually, the same goes for insects. Even in the city, southern species that we've never seen before are increasing due to the effects of global warming.

When we think of invasive species, we tend to only think of things coming from abroad, but there are also things that went from Japan to other countries. For example, Japanese knotweed was taken to Europe by Siebold as an ornamental plant, but I heard it's become a major problem, especially in the UK, which I found interesting.

I heard Kudzu is also a nuisance and is disliked. Kudzu's reproductive power is incredible, so I really felt how tough it is.

Kudzu is certainly amazing.

I often hear that the invasive Canada goldenrod is a problem because it spreads too much, but Kudzu's reproductive power is even greater. It has the strength to swallow up all sorts of things.

Kudzu is also delicious. It's perfect for tempura.

Kudzu shoots are delicious.

The leaves are delicious too. Actually, Kudzu flowers smell like Fanta Grape (laughs).

I didn't know that.

When I find them, I let the students smell them.

I hear that most commercial products for making kuzukiri (kudzu starch noodles) aren't actually made from kudzu these days. I'm told they use starch from other plants.

Only the ones called "Hon-kuzu" (true kudzu) can be said to be made solely from kudzu.

Speaking of kudzu, there's the cold medicine Kakkonto, but do you ever actually harvest kudzu roots?

A pharmacist friend of mine apparently tried it, and it sounded like it was a lot of work.

I once had the students dig up dandelion roots. Since dandelion roots are long, we had a root-digging contest to see who could pull out the longest one. I've also dried those roots and made dandelion coffee.

Dandelion coffee!? Does it actually taste like coffee?

The taste is a bit subtle, but it turned out to be something like it. If you roast the dried roots and turn them into powder, you can brew them with hot water. It looks like coffee.

Tamura: The reason it turns black is probably because it's roasted.

My grandfather used to dig for wild yams a lot, often even on the neighbor's property (laughs). The neighbor was the kind of person who let him dig without complaining, and my grandfather was always intent on digging out a Japanese yam in its complete state, about a meter long. He would happily show it off, saying, "I got a big one!"

In places where they actually cultivate them, they use techniques like burying pipes and letting the yams grow inside them to make them easier to dig up.

That's right. My grandfather knew exactly where wild yams grew, and even in the middle of a thicket, he would tell us, "It's right here," and make us dig. It was like a "dig here, woof-woof" situation (laughs).

At the Yochisha, we go to Tateyama for seaside school, and there used to be a lot of beach silvertop growing around the lodging. The roots of beach silvertop are very long, so we used to compete to see who could dig up the longest one, but it seems we harvested too much, and they almost disappeared. It was discontinued after that, but recently they seem to be increasing a bit again.

For both dandelions and beach silvertop, can you not get the roots unless you dig? Can't you just pull them out?

You have to dig. If you pull them, they usually snap. We actually have records, and there was a time when a beach silvertop nearly one meter long was harvested.

They aren't wild herbs, but how about tree nuts and berries? When I was a child, I used to pick and eat akebia all the time in the countryside.

I used to eat akebia too.

Also, hardy kiwi and Asian hazel are very delicious. In the past, everyone knew where they grew, so we would go to pick a lot of them when autumn came.

When picking akebia, I used a tool made by slightly splitting the end of a long bamboo pole. If you twisted the vine with the tip, it was easy to harvest.

Exactly. Since they grow in high places, we also made tools out of broken tree branches.

They are ready to eat when the fruit turns a bit purple.

It's also a battle against wild animals to see if you can pick them at their peak before they get eaten.

Yes. Sometimes there were traces of animals having eaten them.

The trick with akebia is to put them in a rice bin before they open. They gradually ripen and become sweet. You can also bury them in the ground.

Oh, I didn't know that. In that case, if you pick them early and bury them, you don't have to worry about animals eating them.

Also, there are plenty of crimson glory vines around Tateshina Lodge. I have the students pick these, but if you've never eaten them before, they taste very sour. Even so, the children enjoy eating them. Of course, akebia can also be picked, and when I let them eat those, everyone is surprised by how sweet they are. They seem to find them a bit difficult to eat because of the many seeds, though.

To a student seeing akebia for the first time, it must look like a caterpillar.

The inside looks somewhat eerie too. I also used to eat a lot of raspberries. I would also snack on goji berries and silverbuffaloberries whenever I found them.

And maybe mulberries?

Ah, yes, that's right.

Mulberries are sweet and delicious when they turn black. That's also a battle against insects and birds, though.

Some berries are poisonous, so I am careful. Things like fly honeysuckle look very delicious, and the bright red berries of the Jack-in-the-pulpit also look edible at first glance.

Even though berries and mushrooms have similar colors, there are subtle differences in shade depending on whether they are dangerous or not.

That's true. Poisonous things emit that kind of aura.

The more poisonous something is, the more vivid its color. I wonder if it's warning us or inviting us... (laughs).

Regarding the presence of poison, there are some things you can tell intuitively, like "this red is different." The deadly fly agaric and the delicious Caesar's mushroom look very similar, but for some reason, the fly agaric doesn't look delicious no matter how you look at it.

Being able to tell that difference is unique to humans, combining acquired learning with instinct. There is a history of countless people dying before such wisdom was accumulated.

Previously, a student said something interesting about a midterm exam question. I asked a question like this: "The Japanese monkshood is very delicious. Therefore, it is okay to eat. Answer True or False." Of course, the answer is False, but a student asked, "I haven't eaten Japanese monkshood, so I don't know. If it's poisonous but happens to be delicious, what happens to this question?"

It might indeed be delicious (laughs). Being delicious and being poisonous are two different issues.

Exactly. Humans have developed a sense that poisonous things are bitter through the process of evolution, so generally, you could say they aren't delicious, but I thought it was a very sharp observation.

There's something special about bitterness. Crude drugs, Kampo medicine, and spices are things that could easily be considered dangerous. The first person to eat a chili pepper must have thought, "Whoa, that's hot!" but now they are considered delicious as a spice and are good for preservation. All of that is because wisdom on how to use them well has been accumulated over a long history. When I think about the first person to eat wasabi...

The person who ate it for the first time really put it in their mouth, didn't they?

Is there wild wasabi in Nagano Prefecture?

Yes, there is. We don't dig them up from the roots because they would die out, but we pick and eat wasabi greens.

There is also natural wasabi at Tateshina Lodge. It grows wild in a secret place I haven't told anyone. I feel like it's likely to be found in places where the water is clean.

Can Yochisha students eat wasabi greens too?

Sometimes I pick just a few leaves and serve them as tempura as a trial. I tell them, "Look, it's wasabi."

Does the wasabi flavor remain?

It does. Even in tempura, it still has that characteristic flavor.

You mentioned that the types of plants and flowers are changing on the Yochisha grounds; are such changes also seen in Tateshina?

It's changing at a tremendous pace. When I first started my post, pincushion flowers and, in the autumn, orange coneflowers were growing, and it was a field of flowers. However, now there are almost none. In the beginning, there were so many plants and flowers blooming that I could teach the children many things. After all, about 100 types of flowers were blooming. But now there are no flowers at all. As for wild vegetables, mountain udo used to be all-you-can-pick, but that has also almost disappeared.

Mountain udo is also a wild vegetable with a strong harshness. Do Yochisha students eat it too?

If you remove the harshness, even children can enjoy eating mountain udo.

That's right. The buds are edible, and if you peel the skin, the stems are also delicious.

I like it with vinegared miso.

I serve it as tempura to the Yochisha students. I've tried serving it with vinegared miso before, but it wasn't very popular.

Is the change in vegetation in Tateshina largely due to the influence of deer?

That's right. The deer population has increased and they have eaten up the wild plants. The grounds of the lodge are also covered in deer tracks. On the other hand, natural succession is also occurring in Tateshina; many white birch trees were planted and have grown large, and the ground underneath is covered in Miyako-zasa bamboo grass. It's the influence of both those changes in vegetation and deer damage.

I felt that there were quite a few deer in the beech forests of Tanzawa, which I climbed several times in the past for research. I noticed problems like trees dying while standing, a decrease in the number of trees, and changes in the state of the undergrowth.

In the mountains, deer have advanced into the alpine zones of the Yatsugatake and Southern Alps, and the fact that alpine plants are being eaten has become a problem. Now, deer are even entering places like Kamikochi in the Northern Alps. Currently, they are just passing through, but there is a high possibility they will eventually settle there, so we are trying to take measures to prevent that.

Do measures mean putting up fences? Or do you catch them?

First is culling. Research is being conducted on driving them away or capturing them.

Unless measures against wildlife damage are taken in each region, the population will likely continue to increase.

There are various causes for that. In some cases, as a result of extensive afforestation in the mountains, animals have nothing to eat and come down to the foothills. In other cases, people no longer enter the mountains for their livelihoods, so the buffer zone between the mountains and the villages has disappeared, making it easier for them to descend to the villages. Another cause is that more individuals are able to survive the winter due to global warming.

I also often hear about bear damage.

The decrease in the number of animals taken through hunting is also a cause.

That balance is difficult.

If you only think about local optimization, things will go wrong, so you have to look at the whole and deal with it. At that time, the experience of having been in contact with nature is very important. If you don't understand with your body that nature is complex, you will think that things should work out just by what you've thought of in your head. If too many such people increase, society will head in a strange direction.

I often feel that nature is a complex thing. In chemistry, you want to settle things with a simplistic, short-circuited process, but it doesn't quite work that way. This is even more true for experiments using living organisms. Since you can't just ignore outliers, you have to think that the behavior of living things includes all of those things. Even looking at the environment, I feel like there's a repeated sense of "you can't please everyone."

I have been a science teacher for many years and call it "Collection Science," but I believe that letting children collect as much as possible is the shortest path to making them like nature. Nowadays, people talk about a detachment from nature, and I truly feel that; that is exactly why real-life experiences are so important.

I have also been teaching about wild birds for 30 years, and I have enthusiastically taught students about bird species at the Kogen Gakko (Highland School). I decided to tackle that because children once said the cry of a pheasant was the voice of a monkey. That was a shock, but at the same time, it made me want to teach them properly about birds.

Birds do not appear at all in science textbooks or the curriculum guidelines. Even though birds are all around us, I wonder why they aren't taught in schools. Children know the sound of a bush warbler, but they have never seen the individual bird itself. That is a shame.

There are quite a few birds in urban areas too, aren't there? It's certainly not just sparrows, crows, and pigeons. I often see great tits and Japanese white-eyes as well. When I find them, I think they are quite cute.

That's right. That is why I want to do more of that in education. The Kogen Gakko is part of that effort.

As a mountain guide, I also lead study trips for elementary, junior high, and high school students, as well as climbing clubs for children and families. Actually, even if you live in Nagano Prefecture, there aren't many opportunities to interact with nature unless you are conscious of it. Since parents also have less experience with it, they don't know how to engage with it. I feel it is necessary to teach from that starting point.

When you go mountain climbing, many things must feel fresh and new.

Yes. I think that when you teach them, they begin to see that the world they see is not everything, and that various things are organically connected far into the distance.

Regardless of whether they continue to stay in contact with actual nature, I want to guide them so they can have their own channel for connecting with nature and the universe.