Diary

Abstract

Two books which have given me much pleasure over the last year have been the diaries of a young lady from Japan, Midori Oshioka, written over a long visit to England. Her ambition (realized) was to work as a chef at the Waterside Inn, Bray-on-Thames, perhaps the standard-bearer of haute cuisine in this country. To qualify for the task, Midori put herself through training in food and cookery at the North Oxfordshire College of Technology, entered into extended and exhausting proceedings to obtain a work-permit, and learned to drive. All the while, she lived with a couple of British families near Banbury, cooking, helping with children and being generally essential. Her journals are a charming record of her residence, not least because of their account of the collision or, more usually, coexistence of two distinct styles of cookery and nourishment. It is fortunate that Ms Oshioka’s mother is in publishing in Tokyo so that her manuscript could be conveyed to print. The pages which follow, too few but all we could spare for glorious colour, come from the second of her volumes, entitled Autumn–Winter, England, while the first was called Spring–Summer, England. They are published by Taniguchi-shoten publishers Inc., Tokyo. Should anyone be interested in seeing more, they can be bought from the author herself at Toshima-ku, Ikebukuro, 2-73-5-702, 171-0014, Tokyo. Her email is <[email protected]>