One Life Japan in June

After seeing the visitors off at Iiyama station, I had time to take a three hour stroll around the Temples of Iiyama, this time to take photos.

Taking a mid-day spin though neighboring Tsunan Town.

The rice is planted. Winter weather has left us. The bikes are out of storage. What more could anyone want?

@yurionsen. Every night we bathe at the local bath. One of the perks of country life in Japan.

Catching a lift up the hill to see the snow monkeys in Shibuonsen.

We have been waiting all spring for the mulberries to ripen. Last week they started, just a few berries at a time – enough that Mona insists on walking to school each day past a tree where we find a handful that have darkened overnight.

The container is so we can have some with our breakfast yogurt the next morning, but we have yet to make it home with anything left in it.

The rice fields are planted, and its time to take a break from the rice fields (tayasumi). The locals from our little hamlet gather together with our guests to peel bamboo shoots, and enjoy a brief break before it is time for the neighbors to get back to their fields, and our guests to say farewell as they head onto their next adventure in Japan.

I skipped out on fire department bugle duty yesterday and used the morning to pick cherries with Tomoe and Mona at a nearby cherry farmer. It was part of a special promotion for orchard owners in the area. For 2,000 yen ($20) We were allowed to pick all the cherries we can eat for 30 minutes. It sounds a bit expensive, but cherries are expensive here, and we figure we picked and ate about 10,000 yen worth, plus there is the fun of letting Mona pick.

If not careful, of course, after about five minutes you are full. I tried to go slow, but as good as they were, I was pretty sick of them after fifteen minutes. Tomoe was too, but Mona came up with the great idea to stuff some into her pockets (against the rules). Luckily she didn’t get caught.

It was fun and we have both had our fill of cherries for a year, so no more looking longingly at the 1,000 yen little basket of cherries at the farm stand. We took a little “hike” around the orchard area afterwards because the cherry-farts would have made it impossible to get back into the confined quarters of the van.

Even more fun, however, and cheeper, is picking wild mulberries. Yesterday we visited one of our fields and were happy to find a few strawberries for Mona to pick, but even more happy to find the tiny mulberries on some of the trees that grow like weeds around here.

The unripe berries have a hallucinogenic effect, but the darker ripe ones are fine to eat. Luckily Mona is not a fan of the sour un-ripe ones. (One theory about the reason silk-worms were able to be so easily domesticated is that the the mulberry leaf, which is the only thing they eat, puts them in a drug-induced stooper and prevents them from wandering away.)

June 1st is generally the goal for finishing planting, but this year we were a bit late. One field left to go. Luckily there is a little girl to help me.