them apples (II)

We had one of very few free days away from the beach house site that we've been able to have recently, once again making the drive up to Hotaka, Nagano prefecture, where M's parents live. It was, unfortunately, a very short visit, but the occasion was the annual apple picking day, and just like last year, we had a picture perfect day: warm, clear, and full of laughs and apples.

Once again, we were all baffled by the number of apples that can come off of one small tree about my height (177.5cm) but a lot wider by several meters. No one counted them but there surely were close to 500 apples, including the one or two bags of fruit that had been a feast for the birds. ("Those are the best ones," said the orchard owners. "Birds never eat the bad apples.") Of course, it's easy for us, the pickers, who just go up to harvest the ripe fruit. But the orchard people have spent hours with the tree, worrying about the bees polinating them, culling the number of flower stems so the remainders have a chance to be full-blown, fat Fuji fruit, and protecting (most of) them from birds and worms.

The photo above only shows half of the harvest. We were lucky enough to be given a couple of boxes of these crunchy, crisp apples by M's mom and dad, and then got an extra prize: an all-we-could-carry load of apple tree wood and cherry that M's dad had sawn and split to the right dimensions for our wood stove. (Being at the foot of the Northern Alps, his stove takes logs twice the size of what we need, but he was kind enough to cut them to the size of our Intrepid II.)

So we drove back to Tokyo with a Spike full of firewood and Fuji apples, the car hanging low on its axles as we drove through the glittering lights of Omotesando and the new Nike store celebrating shoes as a liberating experience. And M and I had a good laugh on a bet that any of the other cars driving through this area would have the same cargo. I've no idea how we're going to settle that one.