Tokyo VegeFesta 2015

This year’s Tokyo VegeFood Festa was very successful due to a good turn-out of participants and decent weather, despite thunder, lightning and rain predicted for Saturday. The food highlight for me was vegan paella made with fresh vegetables and long-grain rice. It was truly delicious. I also tried Nataraj’s vegetable and soy meat curries with vegan (komatsuna) nan. There were representatives of NGOs, such as Ark, an animal rescue group that is also involved in anti-fur campaigns. I spoke with one of its enthusiastic members there, a beautiful British woman named Nadia McKechnie. It turned out that she was also the organizer of the Vegan Meetup Group in Tokyo. I ended my day at the VegeFesta by purchasing a week’s worth of organic vegetables from a farm in Nagano: Chinese cabbage (known as “hakusai”), carrots, round daikon, and water greens (AKA “mizuna”). The farm apparently ships fresh organic vegetables directly to customers in Tokyo. Such direct, farmer to consumer, arrangements are becoming more common. It's a great way for customers to get fresher vegetables and farmers to get more fair compensation for their hard labor.