Farmer sells her food for pennies in a trendy Tokyo district to help "young people walking around hungry"
Tokyo — In a city of wealth, comfort and fine food, there's a quiet alley in Japan's capital where passersby often do a double-take. Sharing space with chic cafes and world-class bars, the tiny fruit and vegetable stand seems to have been teleported from a country road far away.
Weather-beaten wood tables groan under stacks of carrots, potatoes, mandarin oranges and other fresh farm produce. But what makes the stall even more remarkable in the heart of Tokyo is that payment is on the honor system — customers just toss coins into an old mailbox — and most of the items on offer are priced at 100 yen, or about 70 cents, in a neighborhood where fresh food usually goes for much, much more.
Retirees stop by in the mornings, but they are not the target demographic. A handwritten mission statement on the stall is addressed: "Dear young people."
"I came here from Hiroshima with nothing. Lived on watermelon for a month, but couldn't ask mom for help. Thirty years on, I grow plenty of vegetables," the note continues. "Tomo-chan is on your side, so don't worry about the future."
Opened five years ago, the produce stand has struck a chord with some of the city's hard-pressed younger residents, revealing a well of hidden despair beneath the glitter and gloss of a world-famous metropolis.
"I had no income. My elderly parents were in the hospital. I didn't know how to support myself," reads one of a sheaf of notes papering the small shop's walls. "Walking to the shrine to pray, I came across your stand. You lifted my spirits."
"I also came to Tokyo on my own," another customer wrote. "Lonely, struggling financially. Working my way through school is hard. You've become like a second mother to me."
"Big Respect!" another enthuses.
The greengrocer with a heart of gold is rarely glimpsed by her grateful customers. Tomo-chan, or Tomoko Oshimo, 53, rises before dawn to prepare to work in her fields in Urawa, outside Tokyo.
Depending on the season, she'll reap a bumper crop of arugula, spinach, snap peas, turnips, onions, eggplant, green peppers, cherry tomatoes and zucchini. A recent December morning found Tomo-chan and her teenaged son Satoru plucking red daikon radishes from the dark earth. Like squat baseball bats, each daikon weighed several pounds.
She supplements her own harvest by buying imperfect produce at the Saitama Central Market, a wholesale market north of Tokyo.
"I can pick up a case of carrots for 600 yen, which normally costs 2,000," she said as she drove in the pitch-dark predawn to the produce auction. "I got a case of grapefruit, still edible, but not suitable for supermarkets, and can sell three for 100 yen."
Despite possessing a killer instinct for bargaining, tempered by an infectious cheerfulness, Tomo-chan said she barely breaks even. She works several overnight shifts every week at a nursing center to supplement her and her husband's modest salaries.
Farming is in her DNA.
"One of my first memories is the scent of fresh strawberries," Tomo-chan told CBS News. Her initial foray into a strawberry patch was as an infant, strapped to her mother's back during harvest time.
Spurning a cozy but predictable life on the family farm, she moved to Tokyo after high school, picking up certifications to teach preschool and as a professional cook, but the cascading ambitions always outstripped her pocketbook. To pay the bills, she ventured into real estate, the perfect outlet for her natural salesmanship, rapid-fire conversation and hard-drinking energy.
She earned enough to invest in a Boca Raton vacation house and a diamond watch.
"While wondering what to buy next," she said, "I realized there wasn't anything else I wanted."
High blood pressure, a near-death experience during labor and a desire to raise her own child led her back to farming. Then, one day as she was selling produce in Urawa, a young customer confided that he barely earned enough to buy food.
"I hate the idea of young people walking around hungry," Tomo-chan said. The seed was planted.
She leveraged her real estate acumen to secure a tiny space in the trendy central Tokyo neighborhood of Ebisu. She knew every inch of the district, including locations where even humble pancake vendors and rice ball sellers could make a decent living.
In her former life, she prided herself on being able to size up people's "value" instantly: "This guy can afford $2,000 rent, or this person is good for only $1,000."
Now, I'm living by not making money!" she remarked with her usual manic energy.
In her new business, Tomo-chandecided to sell her vegetables for a song.
"I want young people to feel that they're not forgotten, that they are treasured," she said as she drove her beat-up sedan, crammed with potatoes, oranges, carrots and radishes toward Ebisu. "That not everyone is out for himself. I can make money anytime. Right now, I want to give young people a helping hand."
Sometimes, when she arrives late in the day, customers get a chance to thank her in person. In return, she's fond of offering botanical aphorisms gleaned from a life that's had its share of both joy and pain.
"Even in a field full of weeds," she likes to say, "you can grow something — if you put in the effort."
