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Sarhento Patola
After Word War II, Japan rationed rice and sweet potatoes because there wasn’t enough to go around. So many people planted sweet potatoes wherever they could: school and home gardens, public parks, etc. Sweet potatoes were even hot on the black market! This was a time before transportation was used to bring food into the city so people took trains out to the countryside, where sweet potatoes were plentiful, just to buy them.
In Japan, the sweet potato is called satsuma-imo. “Imo” (pronounced “EE-mo”) refers to all fleshy tubers that are grown in the ground like white and yellow potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, and taro. The sweet potato is called satsuma-imo because it originally came from Satsuma Prefecture. Kagoshima, a port in Satsuma, often hosted sailing vessels from other nations and this is where the sweet potato is thought to have entered the country.
The Japanese love sweet potatoes! They can be roasted, boiled in a sweet soy sauce stock, made into tempura, or steamed and eaten on a cold winter day. I love teriyaki sweet potatoes over rice with nori. Oishii! Delicious! So next time you eat a sweet potato, remember how special they are to Japan and how even Mei enjoys digging them up in the fall.
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