Weed cuisine at Asaba's Art Studio

Dandilion, doku-haku (poison-out), and other culinary weeds from my new neighbourhood mountain

Asaba-san goes to bed after midnight, then gets up all perky for her 5am morning walk. She and Daku the Dog took me out for second walkies, later that first morning, weedspotting.



This weed is exclusive to this mountain, the locals go to some trouble to protect it. By eating it and keeping it in our minds. The leaves are fragrant, and good in tempura - important information for what will follow later in the day.


Lucky for Duku the dog, the mountain is a very short one. And only five minutes walk from home.

Asaba-san sparkling as usual

Cobra weed

Asaba art school is downstairs. Its where children beg their parents to take them after school, a kind of inventor club where children are important, and life is full of surprises.
Including making weed tempura.
Including meeting your first ever forigner. A fluffy one.

Children's Inventor Club. Illustration by Cecilia Macaulay

Armed, but not dangeous. The children are actually having fun here. They are hand-making odon noodles, to be boiled and eaten with a thin stock soup and tempura. Basically playdough, with a little less salt, and a handfull of chopped weeds for color.


The sun came out, the weeds marvelous, and the children brought me bowl after bowl of crispy hot tempura and chewy ropey noodles. It was my first day of spring, and I was happy.