Cultivation of Wasabi. Wasabi is very delicate plant, so it requires certain climate condition; such as cool temperature, mountain stream, etc. "Sawa" of "Sawa-wasabi" means mountain stream in Japanese language, that is why wasabi is often called as "Sawa-wasabi" It takes about a year to a year and half to harvest. Since wasabi is really picky about climate condition to grow, production area is very limited. Most of wasabi is produced in Shizuoka, Nagano, Iwate and Shimane prefecture in Japan. Cultivation of wasabi was started way back in ancient Japan history. There was a discovery of a very old wooden board from around year of 685, which has writing about wasabi. So, this wooden board proves that cultivation of wasabi has started at least 1300 years ago. Japanese oldest code law, "Taihouritsuryo" indicate wasabi was one of the things that people could render as a tax.
