Thinking about "fermentation lifestyle"

With the beginning of spring, we suddenly notice that spring flowers such as rape blossoms, butterbur shoots, and plum blossoms are appearing everywhere, and we can feel the days getting longer with each passing day.

On the weekend that marked the beginning of spring, Utsushiki began its first " Yellow Wolf + Flower Shop Nishibeppu Shop Exhibition" in a year and a half.

Despite the rain from the first day, the event was bustling and got off to a great start.
The exhibition will continue until Monday, February 12th (national holiday), so please come and visit.

Shortly before the start of spring, I made a personal restart.
It's about making rice bran beds, which I gave up on during the rainy season two years ago!

Since moving to Fukuoka, I've gradually become able to make my own preserved foods such as miso, umeboshi plums, pickled radishes, and plum wine, and two years ago I started making rice bran beds without much knowledge and just on a whim.
However, the timing was bad and I would be away from home for about a week, so I just faded out and quit.

Rice bran bed is considered synonymous with fermented foods.

Even after that, the word "fermentation" kept popping up around me and I couldn't get it out of my head...

Finally, at the beginning of this year, I had the opportunity to take a course on the mechanism of fermentation.

In that course, I realized the fundamental fact that "my own body is fermenting" and I came to believe that fermentation is connected to the way of life itself.

When we look at fermentation from a bird's eye view, it seems as if invisible air is changing things, and this invisible air is also called oxygen, microbial energy, or consciousness.
If we think of that as "energy," then fermentation is the efficient intake of energy.
On the other hand, decay means that energy is lost.

It can also be said that our bodies become healthy when we take in energy effectively, but when energy is lost, a lack of it can make us sick.

When we look at it this way, we realize that our bodies and all matter are kept alive by "energy."

Energy is like Lego blocks, and each small Lego block combined together makes up matter (our bodies and things we can see).
None of them are good or bad; they just have different characteristics, but from the perspective of "fermentation," it's important to collect the same type of Lego blocks as you.

"When people on the same wavelength (frequency) get together, it naturally becomes fun and the atmosphere becomes lively."
We may all have had this experience, but fermentation is exactly like that.

I learned that collecting Lego blocks with the same frequency is the same as "eating your own resident bacteria" in terms of fermented foods, and that's when my interest in making rice bran beds began!
I suddenly feel motivated (lol)
It's interesting because learning about these systems changes your perspective!

Since then, the twice-daily rice bran bed time has felt like magic to me.

I think that the rice balls and hand-rolled sushi we eat every day without thinking about it are a wonderful culture in that they carry the resident bacteria from our hands.

The youngest child of the Ono family, Oto-chan, is 1 year and 4 months old and has recently become a big eater. He eats all the noodles and rice that fall on the table or floor, leaving no residue behind.
She can be seen biting into tangerines with the skin on together with her 3-year-old sister, Muchan.

In the past, they might have picked it up because it had fallen.

It would be a different story if the skin was extremely dirty, but I think of this as an important ritual to introduce resident bacteria and boost one's own immune system.

It makes you smile.

In recent years, we have been told to sterilize, sterilize due to the spread of viruses, but I can't help but question all that fuss, and wonder if this has actually weakened our own immune systems.
(This is just one way of thinking)

However, it is precisely because of these experiences that I want to cherish and preserve the wonderful qualities of Japanese preserved foods.

By the way, My Rice Bran Bed is also available at Utsushiki.
A porcelain glazed pottery by Takashi Ichikawa .
This makes me feel like the fermentation is going much better (laughs).

Fermentation can be done in everyday life, not just in rice bran beds
I would like to continue to explore this further.

Let's have another fermenting week this week♡

Mariko Tanoue