Yusu Mizugaura Terraces The potatoes in my bag felt like a little piece of the landscape to take home

On an early April morning, I followed the coastal road to Yusu Mizugaura. I left my red car in the car park at the foot of the terraces and started walking by the harbor. The terraces stretched away to my left, rising above the roofs of the low houses. They climbed much higher than I'd expected, and I stopped almost as soon as I started walking, just staring up.

The new potatoes I picked up at the foot of the slope came in a little bag of three. When I held the top of the bag in both hands, the brown potatoes seemed to nestle together. I could take home potatoes grown right here. I usually think of potatoes as ingredients, but today the stone walls behind me came to mind first. Every time I looked at the bag, I wanted to look up at the terraces too; I couldn't stop glancing from one to the other.

Up close, every stone in the terraces has a different shape. Layer after layer, they run across the slope. Each field is narrow, but when I look up at them all together, the view opens out across the hillside. I was only looking from beside the sea, yet tracing the rows with my eyes all the way to the top made me wonder how much higher they were than where I stood.

I'd heard that people here have long made their living from both the sea and the fields. The harbor was on my right, the terraced fields on my left, and houses stood between them. After hearing that, the harbor, fields, and homes all felt connected as parts of the same way of life. I came to see the beautiful terraces, but I wanted to linger at the foot of the terraces, too.

When I turned toward the sea, the morning light shimmered on the water. I shifted the bag in my hands and started thinking about what I'd make when I got home. First, I want to boil them and eat them just as they are. I haven't even tasted them yet, and I'm already looking forward to getting into the kitchen. Maybe that's why I wanted to linger in front of the terraces even after buying a souvenir.

With the bag of new potatoes in both hands, I headed back to my car. The bag was small, but it felt as though I could take the stone walls and the sea home with me, too. When I eat these potatoes, I know I'll want to tell someone again, 'They grew on that slope.' Next spring, I'd love to come back for the view and the pleasure of bringing home new potatoes again.