Trip to Nagano prefecture, a paradise of agriculture and hot spring

People call Nagano prefecture, "Switzerland of Japan". Actually, there are high mountains and elevation of the areas is more than 500 m (1,500 ft) high. We visit the areas a few times per a year recently so that we love the areas because of a paradise (or kingdom) of agriculture and hot spring.

In this time, our main purpose was visit to "new soba (buckwheat noodle) matsuri (festival)" in Asama onsen (a small hot spring town near Matsumoto city, which is the second largest city in Nagano).

In the festival, fortunately I got a soba (cold noodle and soy source based soup set) made by the 10th champion of soba making). The taste is great and the feeling in my mouth is wonderful.

Since I sometimes make soba (it is one of difficult hand crafts, I looked at the champion's soba making. It is priceless experience because soba-ko (buckwheat flour) does not easily become appropriate sticky ball. His handwork is a living textbook for all soba makers.

After that, I had to go to a large shopping mall in Matsumoto city because my son fed up with walk around countryside. He went down the escalator like a typhoon to see a toy shop.

During his toy watching, I also saw a local book store. The bookstore in the mall has many local books about map, sightseeing, food, culture, history, folktale, trekking, photo etc.

After that, we stayed a traditional hotel in Asama onsen area. The dinner is wonderful using local agricultural materials. The below dishes were starting. We also optionally ordered a small bottle of white wine. Because local wine is another joy of the prefecture..

Guess what sasimi below! It is my favorite one.

 Since Nagano is the mountain area, no fresh seafood. The sasimi is horse meat. In a Japanese traditional card game, "Hana-fuda" (flower card"), A horse is drawn in a cherry tree card. So, some people call horse meat, "Sakura" (cherry tree).

Next morning, my wife and I walked around the hotel. Because the area is a small town, it was not difficult to walk around. Below is the public center of the town, the place of Soba festival. Because the festival was held on Saturday and Sunday (Nov 1 and 2, 2014), some soba makers already arrived at their booth and had a small meeting and preparation of soba making.

It is late autumn morning. There are large clouds on the mountains around the small town. The morning air was fresh and cooler than Tokyo's one.

After walk, my son and I went to the hot spring bath at the top of our hotel. There is great landscape around. On Saturday, we took bath twice and took one more on Sunday!!! My son and I like hot springs very much. What an extremely wonderful hot spring bath Asama Onsen!

After taking hot spring, we moved to Azumino area. Azumino is very famous area because several essays, literature, magazine articles, and TV programs have mentioned there. Also, Azumino is selected as the most favorite area to live in after retirement.

We went to a horse center in Azumino Switzerland village to make my son get a short lesson of horse riding. I recommend the village because the village has a soba restaurant, a cafe, a local vegetable shop (this is cheaper but various vegetables in the area), a winery, and the horse ranch.

We spent 1 hour during my son's lesson. Behind my son and the instructor, we can see the mountains of the Japan north alps.

To eat lunch, we went to another shopping mall in Azumino. Let me introduce one unique shop in Hana shopping center. The shop below is naming "Kanten Papa" (meaing "dad's agar") held by a local large agar company.

Due to low fat ad low sugar, much dietary fiber, agar is preferable. The company offers various agar-based healthy foods that my wife had much interest in. Also, the shop provides coffee, green tea, and fruit jelly by free.

Also, Nagano is known as "fruit kingdom". The photo below is grape vein in Azumino Winery. The winery has a vine shop where many people enjoy wine tasting.. If you like wine, I recommend to visit there.

On the following day, we moved to south. This is the lake Suwa, the largest lake of the prefecture. There are 4 large shrines around the lake. The shrines have same name, "Suwa Taisha" (Taisha means a big shrine) because the shrines are dedicated to a great deity by season, who was described on the Japan oldest myth.

Our family like each shrine, in particular, each shrine has a hand-washing bawl with a hot spring. It is just a taste of Suwa. In windter, the lake is oftern covered by ice.

On the coldest day, a huge crack from one side to another side appears. Suwa people call the ice crack, "Omi-Watari". "Omi" means the diety, and "Watari" means "coming across".

Ancient Suwa people believed that the crack was the orbit of the diety's move from one seasonal shrine to next seasonal shrine.

Got a broccoli!

We seeded several vegetables in late summer. They are growing up and getting bigger and bigger.

I brought a kitchen knife and cut the biggest one. I think that I can sell them in near markets..

Carrots have also been growing up. I did not cull them effectively in some areas. So, distance among some of the carrots are less than 2 cm. It is too close.

Also, I have found that each one is differ. Some are extremely bigger than others. I picked up them 2.

They are still small. But, the 2 kinds of white radishes are also going well. They are so good so far. I will continuously take care of them. We will be able to get them in December or next January.

Also, still I got small egg plants and peppers. Egg plants are on the final stage. But, I feel that the peppers are at the peak of their power of life.

At the kitchen, I found a caterpillar on the sink. I did think that the season of insects are almost over. We should monitor their activities a little more.

Autumn harvest has begun

After lunch, I went to our vegetable field. All vegetables in the field are growing up well.

5 broccoli trees are going well. The size of the first fruit became bigger than my fist. This is the best timing to eat, so, I cut the fruit.

Next, I earthed up the green onion. They have already grown up but I believe that they will be growing up more and more. In this winter, we will eat Japanese soup in the pot (Nabe) many times using our vegetables like the green onion.

Below is the green onion right now.

This is the cabbage. The ball size is as same as the good one, which is made by professional farmer, sold in the market.

This is white radish. There are blue-neck white radish on the left row and Okura radish on the right row. Okura is the next town of us. The kind of white radish, which is bigger and longer than the ordinary one, is the local one of us.

Chinese cabbage is also growing up well. The leaves will become a big ball but the current leaves are still spread. According to the my farming teacher, we should tie the leaves using a strap early January.

Also, turnips have grown up very well. To make big balls without crack, I did earth up several times. It is time to eat right now!

After that, we boiled the broccoli. I tried one and found that it is very delicious a little bit sweet.

We will eat taro, carrot, white radish, mizuna, turnip, cabbage, Chinese cabbage and Komatsuna (Japanese spinach) in this autumn and winter. What a happy time!!!

2014 Plan (Autumn Planting)

In the previous post, I showed you the spring planting plan. In this time, I would like to explain the autumn plan.

<July>
- Long onion (under the cheesecloth)

- Carrot (the middle all)

<August>
- Cabbage (the second picture)

- Broccoli (beyond the cheesecloth)
- Cauliflower

<September>
- White radish
 We sowed 3 seeds per a hole of the black sheet. In the near future, the best of the 3 seeds will be selected.

- Chinese cabbage
- Turnip (round 2)
- Mizuna (Japanese leaf vegetable)
- Komatsuna (Japanese spinach)

On the same ridge. In the upper area, there  are sprouts of turnip. In the middle, it is Mizuna. The seeds of Komatuna will be sowed soon.

We will harvest Carrot and Broccoli in October and Taro and Turnip in November.

2014 Plan (Spring Planting)

In the farming experience program in Setagaya, farming plan was created and provided by the field owner, who is the old farmer in my town, at the beginning of the year.

Fundamentally, vegetables can be categorized in spring planting type and autumn planting type. So, we started planting from March to May and harvested from June to September. Now, we have just completed autumn planting from August to September. We will eat them from November to January.

We planted the spring planting vegetables:

<March>
- Spinach (under the cheesecloth)
- Potato (the middle all)
- Turnip (beyond the cheesecloth)
- Komatsuna, a kind of spinach (beyond the cheesecloth)

<April>
- Corn (the second photo)
- Taro (beyond the cheesecloth)
- Tomato (the top left six)
- Cucumber (the top right four)
- Eggplant (the bottom left three)
- Paprika (the bottom right one)
- Pumpkin (no photos)

After planting, some maintenance is needed. For example, we did cull the young buds of the corn. Because we planted 3 seeds in a hole. So, we made 3 young buds to 2, and 2 buds to 1. The final one will grow up as a corn tree. The culled 2 were disposed.

Also, to make up tomato trees and cucumber trees, we tied the vine of cucumber (as shown below) with the pillar using the string. Since the vine grows up faster, we did the task once a week or more.

So, from June, we got harvest them even though shape of some vegetables were strange compared with the market products and some were unfortunately eaten by caterpillars.

<Turnips>

<Komatsuna (Japanese spinach) eaten by black caterpillars>

Typhoon attack

Japan is attacked by 20 or more typhoons every year. Moreover, power of typhoons is increasing due to global warming. Today and tomorrow, a middle class typhoon attacks the Japan mainland (Hon-shu) and the typhoon will come to Tokyo tomorrow morning (Oct 6, 2014).

I have 3 eggplant trees in my small vegetable fields and one tree was damaged by a previous typhoon. One major branch of a tree was broken. After that, the eggplant tree has made smaller and less fruits than other 2 trees even though we carefully gave chemical fertilizer and maintained the branches (see the red circle).

Anyway, I hope that the typhoon will not make severe damage my field and our country.

Tokyo Vegetable Life

I am a business person working at a Tokyo office of a global financial company. I have a lot of exciting and stimulus jobs every day. Also, it meas that they are often too exciting and too stimulus to make me exhausted.

So, I love to visit the countryside of Japan. The landscape of mountain, sea, or old town is wonderful (see the sample pictures below).

<Mountain side: Nagano pref>

<Local foods in Nagano>

 <Sea side near Mt. Fuji>

Moreover, I like to eat fresh fish, vegetables, and fruits growing up in the country, which are more delicious because the food is fresh and water and air are clean. Recently, I dream to live somewhere around the countryside though I cannot decide which is better of the sea area or the mountain area now.

As a preparation of country life, I wanted to learn farming and fishing. Then, my wife found a farming experience program in my town offered by the ward office to promote local vegetables and fruits. The program offers small area of a field (3 x 5 m = 15 m^2, approx 140 ft^2) with cheap price (4,000 yen per a month!!!; USD 40). Also, the field owner provides a cultivation plan, which all users have to follow, and guidance whenever necessary (I ask various questions about vegetables with the old expert farmer so often).

You may not believe that there are a lot of vegetable fields in Tokyo special wards. But, you will see a lot of green areas in Tokyo when you see satellite maps such as Google Earth. Because historically there are many green parks and a lot of vegetable fields in Tokyo.

40-50 years ago, there were crowded areas only in Tokyo central area. In the surrounding areas like my town, there were still many vegetable fields. After that, many residential areas have been developed to follow Japanese rapid economic growth. On the other hand, vegetable fields and farmers have been decreasing. So, the ward offices protects and promotes the local agriculture. As one of the promotion and protection, our ward offers the experience program.


My wife and I have participated the program since 2013. In the first year, our knowledge was very poor and made various mistakes but the vegetables were very strong and grew up. As a result, we learnt that fresh vegetables are incredibly delicious even though amateur farmers (my wife and I) made them with various mistakes.

Through the blog, I would like to show such wonderful experience for you guys living out of Japan.

Thank you.