The cold winter months on Shiraishi Island are dedicated to the daikon, a long, white tapered radish that looks more like a weapon than a vegetable. The kanji for "daikon" literally mean "big root," but I suspect this is a typo for "big brute." At 7 to 12 cm in diameter and 30 to 40 cm long, the radish has presence. And it's surely the only vegetable that can double as a WMD -- truly the root of all evil.

Luckily, however, the daikon has sacrificed a life of armament, opting for the Japanese palate instead. And for this reason the radish holds a special place on the Japanese dinner plate. The radish is prepared in a variety of ways, including dried, shredded and grated. It appears in all forms of "nabe" dishes, is shredded and placed under sashimi or is served grated with soy sauce as a sashimi dip. The taste on its own is not so special, but put it with other veggies and it absorbs their flavors, defining the daikon as one of the impostor vegetables.

To "gaijin," the daikon is an amusing vegetable at best, making us wonder if we're not really being dai-conned. We wonder: What's all the rah-rah about the radish? First of all, it's got a resume more impressive than yours and a fan club bigger than SMAP's. So crazy are the Japanese about the radish that one suspects a deep underlying radish fetish. The Japanese radish is not like the small red Western radish, so not surprisingly, the Japanese do not have a reddish radish fetish, but a fattish radish fetish. No doubt about it, the Japanese are extremely fond of the big brute.