There are two types of questions people ask in the classroom.

One type is a confirmatory question: ‘Is this correct? What should I do next?’ The person asking this question is looking at me. Underlying this is the assumption that the teacher holds the answer, whilst I am the one receiving it.

The other is a question that isn’t really a request for confirmation. Something happens right in front of you, and the words just slip out before you realise it.

‘Why?’

The person asking this question isn’t looking at me, but at the contents of the saucepan or bowl.

For those who begin to fill in the blank spaces they have been allowed to decide on for themselves, the following invariably happens. That is the second question. The eyes of those who have made their own decisions and taken action are drawn not to the teacher, but to the changes taking place right before their eyes.

The thing that stood out most clearly was the butter.

I once ran a butter-making workshop with a dairy farmer who rears dairy cows. We used double cream rather than milk. You simply pour it into a plastic bottle, screw the lid on, and shake it vigorously. That’s all there is to it.

At first, the children shake them just for fun. However, it takes longer than they expected. Their arms get tired, so they take turns with the child next to them, and the whole room fills with the sound of rustling.

Before long, the sensation in your hand changes. The splashing sound of the liquid suddenly becomes muffled at a certain point. The person shaking it is the first to notice. When you look inside, you see that what was once a white liquid has separated into a yellowish lump and something resembling water.

The look on the children’s faces at that moment. Something that had been a liquid turned into a solid simply by being shaken. Although nobody had added anything, the object had changed form right before their eyes.

‘Why?’ is the question that comes up here. It comes from the other person before I even have a chance to ask, ‘Why do you think that?’

I believe the order is important. It is not that the explanation comes first and the surprise follows; rather, the surprise comes first, and the explanation follows as a way of making sense of it. Even when I talk about fat particles colliding and clumping together, once the children have been surprised, they lean in to listen.

What’s more, on that day, the person who raises the dairy cows was right there beside us. That day, the connection between the butter made right there in our hands and the children was made right before their very eyes.

The same thing happens in other kitchens too. If you squeeze lemon into the dark purple liquid produced by simmering red shiso, it instantly turns a vivid red.

Although oil and vinegar separate when mixed, adding an egg yolk turns them into smooth mayonnaise.

All of these are changes taking place right before our eyes. And when people witness these changes, their first reaction—even before they open their textbooks—is to ask, ‘Why?’

At a workshop where we made our own salad dressing, a child who doesn’t usually eat vegetables actually ate that salad.

The person accompanying him was surprised. He himself said that what he’d made himself tasted good.

The taste wasn’t all that different from shop-bought produce. What had changed was my relationship with those vegetables. Vegetables that I used to simply eat as they were served had become something I’d prepared myself. I suppose it’s sometimes easier to accept things that you’ve had a hand in making.

There is something these scenes have in common. In each one, the surprise came first, and the explanation followed.

And that sense of wonder always surfaces at the very moment something before my eyes changes. Life is breathed into it, the hard becomes soft, and flour and water turn into bread. The kitchen is a place that shows me, right before my eyes, how things transform, day after day. What’s more, these changes take place not on a screen, but right in the palm of my hand.

‘Why?’ is not something you can simply teach someone to ask. It is something that arises spontaneously from those who have witnessed the change first-hand.

All a teacher can do is not to hand out questions, but simply to guide the learner to the moment when a sense of wonder arises. From there on, the process begins of its own accord within the learner.

However, there is one thing I would still like to clarify. What happens to the ‘Why?’ questions that arise in the classroom once the lesson is over?

Sometimes, a little while later, I receive a message saying, ‘I’ve made it at home too.’ As someone who teaches, this is the kind of news that brings me the greatest joy. I can see the excitement in the classroom whilst I’m there. But whether or not they’ve made it at home is something I cannot see. It’s a reminder that something from that day has lived on, even out of my sight.

However, there are some classrooms that receive the report and others that do not. Even though they all returned home in high spirits, for some it leads to the kitchen at home, whilst for others it does not.

It was a soup-making class that brought me closer to understanding that difference.

No knives. No cooking. Simply tear up ingredients that can be torn by hand, add them to water and stock, and pop the whole lot in the microwave. That’s all there is to this soup.

As a cookery class, it’s rather unassuming. There are hardly any techniques to speak of. Even so, I definitely received a lot more reports from people saying, ‘I made it at home after the class.’

There’s one phrase I remember most clearly.

‘I’ve never looked inside the fridge so closely before.’

It was the adult who said this. They said that, despite opening the fridge every day, they had never noticed it.

When I open the fridge every day, I look at it through the fixed lens of my usual meal plans. ‘I’m making that, so I’ll take that out.’ That is a search, not an observation. Yet, simply by being given a new perspective—that of looking for something I could tear apart by hand—the same fridge became a place I was seeing for the first time.

This soup was designed from the outset to be made in the kitchen at home.

If it’s something that can be torn by hand, even a child can make it on their own. Every home has a microwave. I didn’t specify any particular ingredients so that people could make it using whatever they had in their fridge.

What I passed on was not so much a recipe as a method for finding one. With a recipe, you might not have all the ingredients to hand if you move house, but as long as you know how to find them, you can get started in any kitchen.

I observed the same thing in a course for adults. It was a seminar on how to use sake lees. Most people come to get the correct recipe, asking, ‘What is the right way to use this ingredient?’ However, what I wanted to provide them with was not just a recipe for a single dish, but an understanding of the ingredient’s properties.

Once you understand its properties, sake lees cease to be a specialised ingredient and become something you can simply add to your everyday cooking. Towards the end of the session, more and more people have been saying, ‘I’ll give it a go with what I’ve got at home,’ before heading home. People who came expecting to take home a single ‘correct’ answer end up taking home ideas on how to use it.

Therefore, a report stating ‘I made it at home’ is not a report of a successful reproduction. It is a report that that person has begun to make their own decisions in their own kitchen.

And that decision is not a one-off. The phrase ‘have started making’—as in ‘have started making at home’—illustrates this. It is not simply a matter of having made something once, but of having started making it. Something has begun to take root in that person’s daily life.

I wonder how far those who have picked it up again will go from there.

There is a place that gave me a long-term perspective. For several years, I served as a lecturer at a monthly vegetable study group for adults.

You spend months, and sometimes even years, working alongside the same people. That’s why I was able to watch that initial politeness from the first day gradually fade away. They’d gather their materials, take careful notes, and ask just one or two questions, somewhat hesitantly. That’s how it all began.

I’m going to tell you about three people.

The first person is Y-chan.

When she first started attending, she was one of the quietest students. As the months went by, however, she began to ask more questions, and her questions gradually began to include her own ideas about things she’d like to try.

The way Y-chan looked at the vegetables was a little different. Whilst we were talking about preparing them and their nutritional value, she was gazing at the vegetables themselves, seeing them as something utterly charming.

One day, she picked up a Kagura Nanban and said, ‘It’s cute.’

The vegetable known as ‘Kagura Nanban’ is said to have been given this name because it resembles a Kagura mask. It has a rough, ridged surface and looks a little scary.

They call that vegetable ‘cute’.

That Y-chan is currently creating a picture book with vegetables as its theme. I think the main characters of the picture book were already there in her eyes back then.

The second person is Mr K.

Although it wasn’t exactly ‘just around the corner’, he would make the journey every time, taking his time to get here. He was the sort of person who didn’t say much, but always went about his work quietly and diligently.

That Ms K later went on to run cookery classes from her own home. I didn’t hear this from her directly; I only found out by chance much later. It turns out that my course didn’t end with me, but continued in Ms K’s kitchen, taught to someone else.

The third person is Mr S.

I grow vegetables in my own garden and was attending the classes because I wanted to expand my repertoire of recipes using those vegetables. People who tend their own gardens ask very specific questions. Learning one thing leads to wanting to learn the next.

Later on, this person went on to obtain a qualification in vegetable cultivation in their later years. They then told me the following:

‘After listening to the teacher speak, I realised I wanted to be able to talk about vegetables with confidence myself, so I went on to gain a qualification.’

When it came to knowledge of vegetables, this person—who had been tending a vegetable patch—must have had plenty right from the start. It wasn’t knowledge that was lacking, but rather the feeling that they were someone who was entitled to talk about vegetables. What they gained by coming to learn was the confidence to do just that.

All three of them were doing the same thing. They stopped taking notes, started asking more questions, their questions began to reflect what they wanted to do, and then they sprang into action. The sequence was the same for all three of them.

And none of the three changed after just one session. They were people who kept coming back every month. It took many monthly sessions before they were able to let their guard down. Change requires a sustained space. Put another way, as long as there is a sustained space, adults can change.

One more thing. All three of them have, through their studies, moved from being recipients to becoming givers. Creating picture books. Running classes. Obtaining qualifications and speaking with confidence. I didn’t tell any of them to become givers. Yet, before they knew it, all three had opened new doors of their own accord.

Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that the fact these three people have changed is down to my course. It’s probably the other way round.

The three of them were already prepared to get started. The study group simply provided them with a place to go, a monthly opportunity, and people they could ask questions.

The desire to ‘give it a go’ wasn’t something created by the classroom; rather, it was something that already existed within the individual and simply came to the surface. It was exactly the same as what I’d observed in children’s classrooms.

However, in the case of adults, years of reserve have built up on top of those feelings. Taking things slowly, meeting at the same place at the same time once a month. Perhaps it was that modest, steady accumulation that gradually helped us relax a little.

The child shook the plastic bottle and asked, ‘Why?’ The adult, after attending for many years, said, ‘I’d like to give it a go.’

Their ages and the circumstances that led them to this are completely different. Yet neither of them was prompted to act by someone else’s instructions. Rather, something that lay within them came to the fore through cooking.

I thought I was teaching people how to cook. Explaining the methods and sharing tips. I believed that was my job. But looking back on it now, I realise that what I was actually doing wasn’t really about inspiring people.

So, what is it that prompts people to take the initiative?

TERUMI ISHIBASHI

FARM8 Co. Ltd.,

Next Chapter: ‘The Future Potential Nurtured by Cooking’ – Chapter 4: Perspectives