For Linda Furiya, growing up in a Japanese family
residing in rural Indiana, difficult to obtain Asian ingredients elevated food to a vital and sensory part of life. “I remember it being all encompassing. When my dad harvested the first Japanese eggplant of the season, he’d have us marvel at the beauty of it before it was made into something delicious, Even the community where we lived the cows were milked, the pigs butchered, and eggs gathered from chickens. Everyone had gardens where they grew their own vegetables,” describes Furiya.

“Much of the meals I ate at home were Japanese. My mom used what ingredients she could get her hands on then, put it out on the table effortlessly. The sensual aspect of Asian food and Mid-west sustainability is ingrained in me. It’s the basic roots of why I love cooking, “ Furiya concluded.

At the age of eleven, Furiya experienced her first taste of recipe development when she took a reserve blue ribbon for her chocolate chip cookie recipe at the county 4-H Fair. At eight, Furiya began chronicling her thoughts and experiences.

In 1984, Furiya attended Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Graduating in 1988, her first job took her to Fairfax, Virginia working for Mobil Oil as a marketing representative. Shortly after realizing petroleum oil wasn’t her forte, Furiya took a marketing job for a small commercial developer in the nation’s capital city. Writing corporate collateral and newsletters, she discovered her love of writing.

Furiya left Washington D.C., in 1991 for the sunny shores of San Diego, California. “From watching Charlie’s Angels and Chips, I thought southern California was the California.” Taking creative writing classes at San Diego State University’s extension classes, Linda found her voice writing a class assignment about her ethnic experiences in the Midwest.

Relocating to San Francisco in 1992 was a monumental move. “I’ll never forget that day. It was a crisp, sunny, breezy San Francisco afternoon. I was wandering North Beach and remember feeling overcome with the happy feeling of coming home. I had never lived in a city so full of the Asian American element…and the food! It was life-changing,” rejoiced Furiya.

Rather than pursuing another job in marketing, Furiya steered her career towards writing. Funneling inspiration from her writing classes and the Asian American scene in the Bay Area, she self-syndicated a column called “From Where I Stand.” For five years, this monthly column was published in Japanese American and Canadian newspapers in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, Montreal, and Toronto Canada.

In 1996, Furiya said good-bye to the Bay Area to pursue an opportunity to move to Beijing, China. There she was able to fulfill a dream of writing travel and food-related articles and even a sex advice column.

Two years later, Furiya returned to the City By The Bay and soon after got her lucky break writing a food column for the San Francisco Chronicle on Japanese and Chinese cooking, which she still files. In 2000, she returned to China, this time to the Pearl of Asia, Shanghai, where she wrote her food column remotely, continued writing travel articles, attended a Chinese culinary school, and began the first draft of a food memoir that would eventually become Bento Box In The Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood In Whitebread America.

Furiya returned stateside in 2004 with her young son and wire-hair dachshund. In 2005, she visited Vermont, the Green Mountain State. “The rolling hills and farms reminded me of the area I grew up in southern Indiana and the people and culture of San Francisco. I fell in love.” On a whim she moved with her son and dog.

Ready to settle down for a spell, Furiya welcomes this time in Vermont to carve out for her son a similar childhood revolving around food and country living as she had grown up with.

Furiya’s first book, “Bento Box In The Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood In Whitebread America” debuts January 2007.