Then to see the beautiful Ojiragawa river… but we shorten the visit as it started to rain.
Wine cellar
Design shop just up the road from their house.
2nd May, we went for a walk on the flank of Mt. Gongen (権現岳)…
… or that you are having your Taïs Chi lessonstill in winter mode!Spring is maybe round the corner!
Not the easiest path..… so if you fall, just pretend you are looking for sthRare site in Japan … a meadow (at least for us and in this part of Japan)By the look of the slope and vegetation… we are back in Japan!
They get similar mushrooms as we do in Europe:
… Tommi bought beef for super
Another walk …, at foot of Akadake (赤岳)
Utsukushimori Observatory (美し森展望台)
We got to visit a farmer growing rice and ducks !!
Komatsu, Tommi’s colleague and family (she visited France with Tommi)
… fells like the farm is under a motorway to you ???good water systemmeanwhile, far away in the background…
Golden week (just a weekend really) could not end better than with a great barbecue in the open air with friends…
who is driving?
will have to ask Tommi again, for the name of that bird…
Thanks again Megumi & Go, for this great WE at your cottage!
Next days is yet another discovery for us, as Akiko and her friend – Sakiko – bring us to a remote “village” in the mountains – Maki. It is more like a huge farm with many dependancies and not much of a village anymore… A community / association is keeping the place “alive” all year round. There are just a few permanents, but many volunteers passing by all the time.
1h15 walk to reach the Maki
Traditional houses with hatch roofs, all repairs and maintenance is made by volunteers (although usually professionals at the same time!). The community has several rice fields, vegetable garden (many pees) and a goat couple.
main house
They are working on a sawmill powered by water, it would be based on a Norwegian model…
meals prepared on very traditional oven / pot
peas are sorted one by one… the best looking are sold, the rest will be food for the communitydining room after lunch
An active farm, with constraint to be as autonomous as possible (no access by road!)… always “en chantier!“
Time to go back to work and for us to give a hand…
Second rice pad, a mix of rice species…
rice will germinate in paddy, no dedicated greenhouse in this farm!this time we seed the rice directly on paddy, no trays used.
Tea break …
In doubt of what to do: sort beans
They have a goat and a billy goat…
then it was time for diner
For the dry toilets they made an attempt to innovate …
pretty nice and clever when it works… but apparently a nightmare when it gets clogged!
We then went for an evening walk on our own…
traces of wild grappes
Back to the farm a carpenter is preparing some wood slates for a roof… You need to be good at it and fast as just for the dry toilets he had to make over 13000 of them !
he had us try, just enough to see it wasn’t that easy
It was then time to go and leave the mountain village and join back Hikari. It was a very short visit, we don’t feel we have helped a lot and did not have time to real ask a lot about the activities and way of functioning in such close community.
In the morning the local primary school comes to take class photos
Then Akiko comes to fetch us for Soba at an inn…
For pudding we go to another inn, which was a second choice (specialty was there of Carri Risu) …
high class interior!
a tourist brochure has a picture for her friend..
When then go to help another friend. She came to live here in the mountains with her 3 sons, the husband is still living & working in Tokyo. We are here to help her cutting tree/bush branches in small pieces to make sent bags that will be sold on a market in Tokyo… difficult to believe it would even pay for the trip !!!
She also made some traditional snow shoes!
full service ! top class!!after work, a bit of fun!!
Evening back at Akiko’s place… for more Sansai! We will get used to them before we leave !
Video call with her parents (and Ume) … while eating!(*)
(*) at the time it was surprising!!, now with Corona lockdown, video calls while eating is just another “normal” day !! 😉
Another workshop, this time it is about natural dyeing using plants / trees… we meet many people we had already seen a first time at the Sansai cuisine workshop. No wonder, the region is not so densely populated and there are not many distractions either…
at least we tried!
… most likely for local gazette …… well of course there was a little tea break …somehow whatever we mixed in, we got a kind of yellow, pale greenish tint … no other colours came out!
In afternoon we tried to get to the mountain onsen “Buno Onsen”, but it turns out it is closed until next WE… it was still worth the trip!
We are staying at Akiko’s place, alone… she stays at her boyfriend – soon to be husband.
For our second day, we spent the whole day with Akiko … sightseeing but also dragging us along during her work!!
another giant!
Then Akiko was to help locals to seed some mushrooms. We tagged along and gave a hand as best we could…
Elvis-san, the king!This mixture is used to coat hals a log…sealed and fastened… time will do its trick! we were shown what had been seeded…
First we mix mycelium into a moist saw dust substrate …The log is re-assembled with its other half…it was by then high time for a break! 😉
We got to Elvis’s house for lunch on the grill…
a kind of “pierrade”, muttonthen tripes slightly spiced hot.Our host will not eat at first, making sure we have enough and get a second / third helping… he will only eat once we are almost finished. He explains this is how to be a good host..
After the meal we help him to seed a few trays of rice, all sorts of rice types with very different “plant” aspects. There is so little to seed that we do it by hand, well with a little hand held machine too.
This mix of rice species is to be used for rice paddy art – “Tambo Āto“
We then got for a walk in his rice terraces and enjoy the afternoon… In fact most of these rice fields are not his, he takes care of them, grows the rice and send it to the field owners whom for the most part are living in Tokyo!!
croisement entre Orchis Mâle et Cyclamens ???At edge of forest, along a small stream, they show us some wild Wasabi plantsA great day with Elvis-san and his friend!
before returning to Akiko’s home to prepare the evening meal we go for some sightseeing…
Evening meal is almost exclusively based on Sansai…
The next day, checking with Akiko … we realise we all got stomach problems … overdose of Sansai will have that effect! The locals know this very well, but we were not warned! 😉
It will take us 4 trains from Kyoto to the Nagano mountains where we will meet Akiko, daughter of Megumi and Noriko.
We had a 2 hours stop at Itoigawa, on the north coast.
Itoigawa
Itoigawa: Mountains in background are awaiting us…!
So we only had time for a brief visit of the city renowned for its Jade stones…
best way to get around is rented bikes from JR station…
Jade museum has a splendid garden
Another strange museum, we randomly visited …
Time for our next train …
we didn’t know what was waiting for us when taking this picture…
Last train of 4, was both small and slow…
Otari-mura station
After picking us up from station, Akiko left us for the night at a friends’ minshuku Kominka no Ie (old folk-house) Kozue-No-Yuki
Kozue-no-Yuki
we got the guest house rules … 😉
A beautiful old traditional house
ideal location… also beautiful in full winter (we saw from guest pictures on net)
… so here we go for sansai, first you need to harvest them… Kogomi, Kanzo & Udo … as far as we were told!?
our hosts: Chikatsan & GussanKogomi – Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris)Udo – (Aralia cordata) I believe we should have taken the root of that one…. ?!?
no need to go very far…Kanzô かんぞう – wild licorice, in French: “lis d’un jour” or “hémérocalle” (Glycyrrhizae Radix, maybe…)
This minshuku is run by this young couple (Chikatsan & Gussan) which are not from this region but like Akiko came to work here for a while on regional funds and then decided to stay and open a business of their own.
The targeted customers are mainly Tokyok-ers dreaming of countryside and escaping the metropole. This is why for instance they offer to their guest a charged activity of visiting neighbouring farm to get some eggs… Maybe some city people never made the connection between chicken and egg ?!?
Sansai tempura … miumi!Open air onsen (Rotenburo) up in the mountain – ☆☆☆☆
we will soon learn that there is just that much that a non trained stomach can handle when it comes to Sansai…!!traditional tatami night …
22nd April
couldn’t tell who was that third person… a neighbour / a parent …
clearly the place was all to provide a brief experience of the past to express visitors from Tokyo…
Akiko then took us to an “atelier” organised by the community to teach newcomers about those famous Sansai …
a true experience…
a crowd…… and in the mean time…they had been collected the previous year and preserved with salt
we had a professional of food industry and also a local with “field” experience…Better than theory… practiceLike in Asterix and Obelix it all ends with a feast and singing…
its all mountains and a main roadLike in Europe, the main road in mountains follows the main river
with gas station, road station… don’t ask
Akiko also took us to meet a local old folk weaving rice straw into traditional items, but also cat panniers which Akiko and a friend were to go selling in Tokyo!!
One day (20 April) in Kyoto, so Elina can also enjoy some more classic touristic sites (in particular some very impressive temples).
Honesty it was somewhat a chock! So far we have been out of crowds and touristic places …. the feeling is not so pleasant – we’ll have to get use to it!
