Wisteria Festival

Each year near by in the town of Kazo there is a Wisteria festival. It is held in the park next to the horse temple. It is a most pleasant and peaceful local family event. Over a series of weekends when the Wisteria are in flower people come and picnic and admire the flowers.

The tree you see here is over 400 years old, wonderful to think of all those generations pruning and tending to it. I paced out the area and this one tree covers 35 m2.








What's so nice about it is that its a very quiet and local event. No tourists ,except me, anwonderful local food stalls set up to help with the picnicking.



In fact the food was astonishingly  good and much better than the usual funfair fare.

 Charcoal  salt grilled Ayu, a small mountain trout. Incredibly fresh and sweet.







                   Grilled squid in a secret sauce.

Takoyaki, grilled octopus balls made with a kind of egg/dumpling dough. Always a favourite at these events.

 

                                    Fried noodles,Yakisoba.

 Lollipops and cheap toys.

Like France, there seems to be a festival or celebration of some sort almost every weekend. The local towns and villages take turns in hosting them. We really don't have this sort of thing, or at least don't do it very well,  in Australia. Except of course  the  Port Lincoln Tuna-rama, Tamworth Elvis Impersonators Festival and the Bundarra Goat Races.

Poster Madness

At our local station there are a fantastic collection if posters announcing various things. I'm developing a bad case of "poster love". I can only understand bits and pieces but the designs and subject matter are often marvellous. Wonderfully, many if them advertise flower festivals, cultural events and often just advice on how to be a good Japanese.

Cute characters, often explaining quite serious things, are ubiquitous.

This one tells women to watch out for gropers etc and what to do to avoid them.

An advertisement for a TV drama.

An advertisement for the Skytree Line. This is the new name for our local line because it runs through the station where the tallest structure in the world has just been opened. The Skytree is much in the news and has already attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors. You don't want to be on the observation platform at the top during an earthquake though.

To Market to Market

Despite the rise of convenience stores, local farmers markets are thriving in Japan. As in  Australia concerns about food safety are causing a constant increase in bsuiness for them.

In our area there's a great market open every day. It has all sorts of local foods. All coming from the surrounding fields. This means that even the soya sauce and cooking oil is local.

The photos, names, addresses and phone numbers of each of he farmers is displayed above the produce so you can ring them up and find out how it was produced.

 


As with all markets it pays to get there early, a shufu senso (housewife war) breaks out at about 10.30 and serious injury can be sustained while trying to get the best tomatoes.

                                                         

Spring is the time for bamboo shoots

Prices are very low. In fact compared to Australia, in Japan many of the basic foods are far cheaper.

You can get different sorts of rice grown litereally from the fields across the road. You can then get it polished to various degrees. Much like selecting your coffee in Australia. Tomono uses a blend of Mr Suzuki's rice and one called "Snow Queen".                 


We then get it polished to 80%. The resultant grains are really like nothing I've seen in Australia. Little pearls would be the best way to describe them. With a translucent quite firm outer skin and sweet soft and fluffy inside.

Our area being quite a traditional place, all sorts  of unusual produce pops up from time to time. An all time personal favourite of mine are deep fried locusts...no I haven't tried them










The market has a real community feel to it  and at different festival times etc lots of traditional activities take place there.

Here, making "mochi", sticky rice cakes. They sing a song a they do it. As one hits the rice with a big hammer, the other in between times, quickly turns it. The song is to prevent bad timing and smashed heads and hands.

Back Again and around and about.

Well here we are again back in Japan for another few months and I'm back at school this time in Shinjuku, more later, the busiest train station in the world.

 It's still very cold at night but spring has certainly arrived.

Our house, typically jammed up against all the others.

I took a walk on Sunday around our area and below are some photos that give you a bit of idea of what it is like.

Very soon it's going to be children's day and our neighbour is getting in early with the carp kites. If this was Australia he would be the neighbour with the biggest Christmas tree lights.

Cherry blossom everywhere.

Although there are factories here and there, there are still wonderful old and surprising things. Diagonally across the road from the house is a little temple that's about 800 years old. Our little road is this old too and was build as part of the Kamakura road to allow samurais to hurry to the old  capital at the time of the Mongol invasions.

 The road is very narrow only just wide enough for one car, or two samurais.

Many of our neighbours are enthusiastic gardeners and grow a great range of vegetables. It's still pretty cold so there are only the onions etc at the moment but the ground is being  prepared for many other things. Planting will start in a few weeks. People rent part of old rice fields and have huge garden plots. much like the plots you see/used to see along the rail lines in England.

There are also many rice fields.

Quite a few splendid old houses with beautiful traditional gardens.

Also wonderful gates.A

Villages and little settlements are only a short walk apart but some of the older shopping streets are looking a little sad. Falling population and the rise of convenience stores and big supermarkets has meant the end of many little shops. There are now about 1/4 as many places still going compared to when I first visited the area 25 years ago.

Speaking of convenience stores the quantity of them Japan is truly astounding. For instance there are  8 within 7 minutes walk of our house, and we live in the outer suburbs/country. Companies own 10,000 or more stores and talk of opening more each year.

So these streets are referred to as "Shutter Town." A sight and name you see all over Japan.

 A surviving electrical store. About the size of a two car garage. It's a wonder it's still going, perhaps the cartoon characters help.

Stopped for a few quiet ones and a snack at local little "izakaya" or drinking shop.
Here's the specials of the day.

Amongst these:
A curry set lunch $12.
Fresh grilled herring $6.
Fresh sardines $4.

And the last one: whale, a steal at $6 a plate.

Actually quite hard to find these days, no-one is eating it eat as we well know.