Japan's Seasonal Flavours

Japan is a land that is highly aware of the changing of seasons. I often get asked if we have four seasons in Canada and when I say that we do, I am met with a surprised and seemingly never ending "eeeeehhh?!?", like they assumed that Japan was the only place on earth that had four distinct seasons. In some ways they are right though. Japan relishes in the changing of seasons like no other place that I have ever lived.

Baby William trying to break his way into
a pack of sakura flavoured yogurt

In Canada we fairly passively observe the changing of seasons. Spring is met with a "Hey, its nice that the snow is gone and flowers are on the lilac bushes", but not that much more. Maybe because of year round climate controlled houses the seasons are merely something you see outside your window, not a cold, heat, or humidity that you endure all day long. If Canadians dealt with humid, sticky houses when it rained, freezing cold houses in winter, or hot and humid houses in summer, they might find a way of celebrating and glorifying the changing of seasons a bit more. We also like to have constant access to our favourite foods all year long, even if this means we are importing them from across the world and they taste like little more than bland shadows of the foods they should be.

After moving to Japan, we noticed fairly quickly the availability of certain foods and products only in the right season. Want to buy a fan in the winter? Sorry! Have to wait until the appropriate season. Is it an unseasonably warm spring day? Be prepared to get some looks like you are a crazy person if you wear anything other than long sleeve shirts, a sweater, and pants. Do you want to by strawberries in October or tomatoes in December? Not every store will carry them, and if they do you will pay and arm and a leg.

In late spring, I am always happy to eat boiled soramame

Summer is the perfect time to eat a delicious meal of cold noodles like somen

Would winter be winter without eating mikan every day?

Nabe. In winter we revel in it and every other season we
remember it fondly. 

The strict seasonality of products can occasionally be pretty annoying, but once you get used to changing your shopping and menu planning every three months it is really fun and wonderful. I look forward to spring every year because I love how sakura (cherry blossom) flavoured products suddenly show up on the shelves. In summer I am always happy to see my friends warabimochi and all sorts of fresh veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers, and edamame cheap and readily available. Even though brassicas have never been my favourite, we eat turnips, cabbage, and daikon fairly often in the winter months. Though this is something we never really needed to do back home, it has made the seasons into something that we celebrate and anticipate. It is also a way to overlook the unpleasant things that come with them, like heat, cold, bugs, and rain, making them seem more bearable.

Every New Year my children test just how much
fresh mochi they can ingest in one sitting. 

Visits Around Hiroshima

On the way back from our trip to Oita, we spent three days in Hiroshima City . By the time we arrived, the sakura were in full bloom and that meant tons of tourists, especially in Miyajima, which we visited on one of these days.

Our first supper once we arrived was of course a meal of okonomiyaki, Hiroshima style. Yum!

On our second day, we took the ferry over to Miyajima. The only other time that Dustin and I have been here was in the fall and everything certainly looked different clothed in blossoms. We spent the day at the aquarium, walking around town, and enjoying the views of the Seto Inland Sea from the top of Mount Misen. It was beautiful, but packed with people.

The next day was spent wandering around Hiroshima City. Like Miyajima, it was also pretty packed with tourists and blossom viewers and made me realize how tired I get being in large crowds of people. I am pretty glad that we live in our little city of Fukuyama and not the capital. I like the fact that it is almost shocking to see a tourist or backpacker and that crowds are only found on a few days a year when there is some festival or event. 

We all had a nice time, but I was pretty glad when we got back to Fukuyama and I was able to relax a bit. No one can accuse me of not getting enough fresh air and exercise this pregnancy! 

A Walk in the Park

After two weeks of avoiding blogging I am running out of excuses why I can't park myself in front of the computer and let everyone know what is happening in our lives. The weather has been so wonderful lately that I have been trying to keep the boys outside about as much as their little bodies can handle it. However, seeing as William decided to wake up at 5 am this morning (again), I find myself with lots of free time in which to blog. We have been pretty busy in the past couple of weeks so I might have to post every day before I am caught up to current events. I hope William doesn't take that as his cue to wake up at 5 every morning!

I have been enjoying spring to no end. Usually, April - May in Manitoba was a time of melting snow, flooding, mud, brown grass, and chilliness. Just to remind myself of what it was like, I checked out a post I had written almost exactly a year ago in Manitoba. Here in Fukuyama we transitioned in a span of two weeks from relatively chilly to warmth, green life, and a profusion of flowers.  There are so many plants doing wonderful things that I finding hard not to stop and inspect them all. The sakura have long since dropped all of their petals but since I am so behind in posting, here are a few pictures of a picnic we took while they were in full bloom.

We traveled with our neighbours to Senkoji park in Onomichi, which is about 10 minutes west by train. The park is on the top of a 140 meter hill and has a cable car that you can take to the top. The kids were overjoyed to take the cable car.

Once we arrived at the top, we were treated to a breathtaking view of the town and harbour with pale sakura blossoms everywhere you looked

I don't think we will ever get a family picture where Theo doesn't look like a caged animal

William's favourite part was yanking the petals off

and Theo's was climbing the trees. What boys!

I found a patch of gorgeous shelf mushrooms

The cherry blossom season was short lived but I am glad that we were able to enjoy the beauty of the cherry trees at Senkoji park while they lasted.

Sera Park

On Saturday, we went for a trip with some friends of ours to a park in Sera Town, which is about an hour drive north west of Fukuyama. We had never been there, or even heard of this town before, but our friends, who have become like an adoptive set of grandparents for the boys, were certain that we all would have a fun time.  The weather started off pretty dreary, with little spatters of rain, but by the time we arrived in Sera it was warm and sunny with blue skies.

It was obvious that we were much higher up in the mountains since the sakura are falling from the trees in Fukuyama and the buds hadn't even opened in Sera Park. There was a large and very creative playground area for the children to play in and quite a few acres of hilly green space.

This is a view of the playground area where the kids spent most of the morning exploring and playing:

Surrounding the playground was open recreational space. You can see that all of the cherry trees are still naked.

William making new friends and checking out all of the fun playthings

There were even three miniature ponies. You could pay 30 yen (37 cents Canadian) to feed them a dish of carrots or 100 yen (about 1.25$ Canadian) to go for a ride. I don't know much about the nutritional needs of ponies, but it seems like a steady stream of children feeding them carrots all day is a bad idea. They seemed happy enough though.

Theo spent a lot of time riding the spinning saucer. I would have loved it as a kid, but now it made me queasy just watching.

After an hour or so of playing, we all stopped to enjoy a delicious picnic that our friends made for us. There was onigiri, barbecued beef, vegetables, sausages, pickled radishes, spaghetti, potato salad and omelet rolls. It was so, so good!

After lunch, William went down for a nap so Dustin, Theodore and I went for a hike around the rest of the park. Like a true explorer, Theo's first goal was to find an appropriate walking stick which he called his "wizard's staff".

On our walk we came across a man flying a super long and colourful kite.

The surrounding mountains were extremely beautiful, especially since there was not a sign of human habitation for as far as the eye could see. 

At the top of a nearby hill, we found another, smaller playground. Theo clambered around pretending to be the Spider King and that ladybugs where invading his spider castle. I don't think he will ever be bored.

We also found a super long slide.

Eventually William woke up and we decided to head home, stopping by the Sera Winery on our way. I assumed there would just be tours of the vineyard and wine tasting, but it seems they have really put a lot of efforts into attracting tourists. There was live music, a farmers market, a miniature steam train that the children could ride, all manner of desserts flavoured like wine for sale, and of course, many different wines to try and buy. To top it all off, we arrived just in time for a mochi throwing event.

In the end it was four happy adults and two very tired and content children that piled into the car for the trip back to Fukuyama. What a fabulous way to spend a Saturday. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Oshima!