Simplicity at Home by Yumiko Sekine

Author:Yumiko Sekine [Sekine, Yumiko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

This may look like a lot of food, but it’s a fairly typical breakfast spread, which gives us energy and a good start to the day. It will include a bowl of rice, miso soup, pickles, folded egg omelet, boiled spinach, little fishes, and grated daikon radish.

I have an electric rice cooker, but I recently bought a Kinto brand ceramic cooker for gas stoves. It cooks rice perfectly, and in a short time. I also like its simple shape.

Hand-Carved Wooden Spoon

Rediscovering Traditional Handicrafts

My mother used to do wood carving at home, sometimes adding decorative details to furniture that my father made, sometimes making small pieces of her own design, like coasters, little dishes, and trays. I love the things she made—and the fact that she made them. Many of these pieces are in my home today. As a kid, though, I never had much interest in doing any woodworking. My school offered lots of classes, including one on wood block printing, but none of these held any appeal for me. My attitude changed a few years ago when I had the opportunity to participate in an all-day workshop with a very well-respected artist, Ryuji Mitani. It was focused on making wooden spoons, and it turned out to be an incredible and fully immersive experience.

One Saturday, very early in the morning, I drove to the city of Matsumoto, which is about four hours west of Tokyo. I arrived in Mr. Mitani’s workshop around nine. There were ten other people taking the workshop, and we all boarded a small bus and rode to a tiny mountain town. Once there, we walked for another half an hour, until we reached a small clearing. We sat under the trees alongside a river while Mr. Mitani explained how to carve a spoon.

First we sketched the outline of a spoon on a rectangular piece of wood. Then, with a chisel, we began cutting away the wood around the outline.

We worked happily with the sounds of the river in the background. After about two hours, our blocks of wood began to resemble actual spoons—with a little help along the way from Mr. Mitani. When we were done, we went back to Mr. Mitani’s workshop, where he served us warm soup, bread, salad, and wine. We all used our newly carved spoons to eat. As I discovered, wood carving is both meditative and creatively fulfilling. I’ve since made several other hand-carved utensils, including a mate for that first spoon.

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