Japanese Pear Picking in Chiba!

Today was such a beautiful day!  It would have been such a waste to stay inside (especially since it was also a holiday), so I decided to go Japanese pear picking!

Takaai Nashi Farm, Chiba

Japanese pears can be found in many supermarkets now, but the actual fruit picking period is quickly coming to a close.  According to many sites, many people can participate in Japanese pear picking from the end of August till the beginning of October.  I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to find a place to go pear picking but after many phone calls I found one that was still open!

Takaai Nashi Farm

Japanese pears, or nashi

About a 10 minute walk from the east exit of Higashi Matsudo Station in Chiba, Takaai Nashi Farm is a small Japanese pear orchard.  It is run by a nice lady who helped me pick the best pears!

Admission into the farm was free, and two pears cost about 300 yen.  I paid about 850 for the pears that I picked, and she even gave me one for free!

Bag of Japanese pears

For those planning on going, definitely call ahead!

Takaai Nashi Farm
047-392-6234
Open: 10am-4pm
千葉県松戸市高塚新田49-1

Sawara Fall Festival!

On October 10th, my friends and I went to Sawara, Chiba, for their biannual town festival!  This festival has a history of more than 300 years.

Onogawa River running through Sawara

Visitors to the Sawara Festival can arrive by boat!

Sawara has two festivals throughout the year, the Fall Festival and the Summer Festival.  It's famous for their towering doll dashi, or festival floats.

Citizen's pulling the doll festival floats.  Some of them weigh more than 2 tons!

Pulling them through the streets of Sawara

Walking around Sawara gives visitors a sense of going back in time, since the shops and buildings haven't changed for hundreds of years.  Many of the shops now are still as they were more than 100 years ago.

Visitors can also arrive by train at Sawara Station

The Sawara Festival (Fall especially) is one of my favorite festivals in Japan, since visitors can see traditional Japan wherever they look.  I always see and learn something new every time that I go!  Plus there is a lot of delicious food here!

Chocolate Banana sold at stall

Sweet Potato Ice Cream! Tasted just like Japanese sweet potato

Fan Dance

Floats lit up at night

Even young children help pull the floats! So cute!

In addition to the doll festival floats, Sawara is also famous for sake and for a shop that makes black soba (buckwheat) noodles.  I've never tried the soba noodles, but their sake is delicious!  If you get a chance, please try their Doburoku sweet sake!

Part 3: Digging for Sweet Potatoes!

On October 3rd, Asahi ALTs participated in the last event of the Asahi rice planting experience, where we got to dig up sweet potatoes and participate in mochi-tsuki, or pounding sticky rice cake.

Digging up the potatoes was pretty fun since we got dig with our hands!  Everyone had a small area where they dug up sweet potatoes. I didn't have many potatoes in my area, but the child who I was next found so many potatoes in his area!!! It was pretty unfair hahaha :P

Japanese sweet potatoes that I dug up

After potato digging we got to see children pounding the sticky rice cake with their big wooden hammer! It was so cute!

We also got a bag of rice!  I'm pretty sure that it was the rice that we had harvested before too! I thought that it was really cool knowing that we had helped harvest the rice that we were given.

Harvested rice

Part 2: Rope Making and Rice Harvesting in Asahi, Chiba!

On Saturday September 5^th, my friends and I went back to Ohara Yugaku Museum in Asahi to take part in the next experience: rope making and rice harvesting!

When we got there, we noticed that some volunteers had farming clothes prepared for participants who wanted to wear them (for free!) so we decided to wear them for the day.

After the welcome ceremony, we began the first event of the day: making rope from straw!

 

ALTs making rope from straw

The old ladies who were teaching everyone made it look so easy, but it turned out to be really difficult!  I had to restart my rope a couple times.  But in the end I (sort of) got the hang of it!

 

The rope that I made

We all wanted to keep our ropes, but unfortunately we used them for the rice harvesting activity in the afternoon.  The person in charge briefly taught us how to stand and cut the rice, and afterwards we made our way to the rice field that we had weeded two months before.

 

A child cutting the rice in the rice field

Cutting the rice was really fun!  We used the ropes that we had made that morning to bundle the rice.  It was really cool sharing the same experience with traditional Japanese rice farmers.  We cut the rice for about 45 minutes, and while there were a lot of other participants, there was still a lot of rice plants left uncut by the time we finished.  Now, there are machines that can easily cut the rice plants so it isn’t as strenuous for farmers to harvest the rice annually.  It was still an awesome experience to cut the rice by hand, so if anyone gets the opportunity to partake in this kind of event, please give it a try!

Part 1: Rice Field Event in Asahi, Chiba!

Japanese summers are notorious for being hot and humid.  But on the rare occasion that the wind blows, being near a rice field is truly breathtaking.  Seeing the rice plants billow in the wind is very relaxing, and the wind feels so refreshing!

Japanese rice field, Asahi, Chiba

On July 11th, a group of ALTs and I participated in part of a rice harvesting event.  This particular event is made up of four parts: 1) rice planting, 2) weeding and bug catching, 3) rice cutting, and 4) the harvesting of the rice.  My friends and I participated in the weeding and bug catching experience.

"But weeding is so boring!"  That's what my friends and I thought at first, but it actually turned out to be really fun!

See! Everyone is smiling! Photo credit: Koki Hirano

Cutting the grass! Photo credit: Koki Hirano

The event took place at the rice field near the Ohara Yugaku Museum in Asahi, Chiba.  We went down to the rice field around 10:30 AM, and with out little hand scythes we cut the weeds around the rice field.  If the weeds made their way into the rice fields then they could actually damage the rice. 

Lotus plants near the rice fields

After eating lunch, we started the second part of the experience: bug catching.  I don't really like bugs, but one of the members of our group loves bugs, so she had the time of her life trying to catch bugs and frogs with her net. Many children who were participating also had a lot of fun going into the rice field and catching frogs and other small creatures. 

Children having fun with bugs 

Can't wait for the rice cutting event in September!