Salad days as Japan roots for plucky radish

The quiet Tokyo neighbourhood of Higashikurume is getting its 15 minutes of fame - all because of a root vegetable that doesn't know when to give up.

Residents were amazed to find that a daikon - a thick white radish often used in Japanese cooking - had pushed its way between an asphalt pavement and roadside ditch, miles from the nearest field.

"I have absolutely no idea how the seed got here," a local government official told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

The plucky radish, which is 4cm in diameter, is thought to have taken root in soil beneath the asphalt and nudged aside a heavy wooden lid covering the ditch as it got bigger.

In less sentimental times the radish would have gone straight under the knife and reappeared sliced in a stew or salad, or finely shredded as a garnish for raw fish. For now, though, it seems that this particular super-tuber will be spared to serve as a reminder to its human neighbours of the real meaning of perseverance, a virtue many Japanese fear is being lost.

Japan's obsession with radishes that survive against the odds is beginning to rival the interest Britons showed in phallic vegetables, courtesy of Esther Rantzen, in the early 1980s. Several towns now claim to have their own versions.