ABSTRACT
It was a great surprise to the Japanese when they discovered that foreigners were really fond of such a common vegetable as the sweet potato. Vendors of the sweet potato appear along the streets, and during the colder months little shops provide the delicious imo, roasted and cut into halves, quarters or slices for a very small sum. The potato oven is open to the street, and around its warm brick walls the poorer children congregate. Tokyo alone has more than a thousand of these ovens. True to Japanese habits the keepers of sweet potato ovens permit no waste, saving all scraps and peelings for horse feed. Even the ashes of the oven are sold for the hibachi, the Japanese brazier, where they serve to prolong the life of the charcoal by partially burying the coals, making them burn slowly.
