12.a 21-22 April – With Akiko: Sansai

Print 🖨 PDF 📄 eBook 📱

or how to prepare mountain plants !

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

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…

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…

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

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!?

**Kogomi** – Ostrich Fern (*Matteuccia struthiopteris*)

**Udo** – (*Aralia cordata*)
I believe we should have taken the root of that one…. ?!?

**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 ?!?

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…!!

22^nd 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 …

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…

Like in Asterix and Obelix it all ends with a feast and singing…

Like in Europe, the main road in mountains follows the main river

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!!