Scientists aren’t the only people who participate in Japan’s Antarctica expedition program, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary. Helping to support the research conducted at Syowa Station are teams of engineers, mechanics and doctors. Their job entails not only keeping 30 fellow expedition members fed all year round but also delighting and uplifting them with occasional parties and events, as the group weathers one of the harshest living environments on Earth with few other forms of entertainment.
All this must be done while keeping limited food supplies in check and making sure that nothing goes to waste. Despite those challenges, Junko Watanuki, 52, one of two chefs who ran the base’s kitchen in 2016-17, cherishes the experience like no other. She says it taught her invaluable lessons about a simple and sustainable way of living, and it leaves her yearning to go back.
She became interested in going to Antarctica in 2003 when she saw an article featuring a female polar region correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun. At that time, Watanuki, who graduated from a culinary school in Tokyo, was a stay-at-home mom after resigning as a cook for the school’s employees. Years later, she watched “The Chef of South Polar,” a 2009 comedy about a passionate cook stationed at a Japanese station in Antarctica, reigniting her interest in the continent.
Now in her late 30s, she was completely overtaken by the desire to join an expedition. Watanuki began frequenting an eatery run by a former Antarctic chef in Yokohama and listened to tales of culinary pursuits at Syowa Station. While she already had experience handling large volumes of food through her job at the cooking school, Watanuki took up a part-time job at an izakaya to train how to prepare a variety of dishes quickly.
It took her three attempts over three years to pass the exam to join the expedition, which included a high-pressure interview with a National Institute of Polar Research panel. After months of training and pre-ordering ingredients to ship from Japan, she flew out in the winter of 2016 and boarded the icebreaker Shirase at Fremantle, Australia. On the base, the first couple of months were the hardest, she says, as she had a hard time figuring out how much food she could use each day.
After a while, I could grasp the pace of consumption and felt OK.” She also organized seasonal events, working with other expedition members to prepare food for special occasions such as New Year’s, Halloween and Christmas. She even recreated the famous Jiro ramen shop on the base at the request of a team member. That project involved months of planning, including visiting the actual Jiro ramen shop while in Japan for research, making chicken broth from scratch and growing 8 kilograms of moyashi bean sprouts in the greenhouse at the Syowa base.
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