It turns out that a farm tour is a farm tour.

Never mind that the farmers know only Japanese and that there is a small but distinctive temple in the background.

This is a testament to just how useful and valuable a farm tour is. No matter how many you go to, there is always something more to learn, always a new idea.

And if the farmers are young and enthusiastic it is a pleasure to simply watch them explain their trade. And so it is at our first tour of a Japanese Farm, Furutanai Blueberry Farm, where Yohaei and Akiko grow blueberries (a crop not well appreciated in Japan) and 40-50 varieties of vegetables on about 2 ½ acres.

Part of their marketing is to sell direct to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), or Teikei as it is called here. The boxes go to Kobe and Osaka, an hour’s drive away. “No one nearby will buy vegetables,” they explain through an interpreter. “Everyone here grows their own garden.”

I have heard that before, as a reason that CSA doesn’t work in a particular place. I don’t really believe it in the U.S but here it just might be so. On the bus ride to the farm, there were few spaces not devoted to growing food, mostly in very small plots. The space taken up by buildings, of course, the small formal gardens in front of most, and the steep sides of the foothills represent about the only ground not under cultivation.