Pickin' and Pluckin'

m got to wear her all-weather ski gear that she got for her ski trip last year.

This is the third year in a row we've picked and plucked the same ol' apple tree up in Nagano with m's grandparents, which means it is now officially an autumn ritual. (We stay at their beautiful house in Hotaka and eat big breakfasts and stare at the fire in the wood stove, since it's already a necessity here.) Unlike the last two years, though, when the weather has just been spectacular, the weather was wet and drizzly, though it did let up enough for us to do a very quick job of harvesting the apples. m's grandparents have already done the hard work over the summer, pruning the buds--they remove 9 flowers for each one they leave--so that the remainder will get the full sun and grow plump and red.

It doesn't seem like much of a tree, but it sure knows how to produce apples. It's also at a very handy height.

We got all the apples in the cars just ahead of a downpour and then made it to a ramen shop for some spicy noodles to warm us up. When we got back to the house, we had to dry all the apples to keep them from going bad, so we wiped them down and spread them out. We'd never actually counted them before so m's grandad did the laborious chore while we bet on the outcome. 447 pieces of fruit from one tree, not even counting the ones damaged by the birds and insects etc. How do you like them apples?

The next day we headed back to Tokyo, loaded down with boxes of apples. As we crossed the ridge overlooking Lake Suwa the skies started to clear.

By the time, we hit Kofu, it had turned into a beautiful day, with the snowy Southern Alps peaking out through the clouds.

I prefer the sea for long-term viewing, but these trips to Nagano are always cool. Matsumoto, which is just next door, is the first place I lived after coming to Japan, and the autumn smells--burning rice fields, the forests--really jogs the memory banks.

Shichi-go-san

M didn't feel confident about doing m's hair and kimono (it is a bit complicated) so we had it done at Morito Shrine in Hayama, just down the road.

They let me in to the room where they did m's hair and make-up (if I got bored, there was a poster with illustrations of every one of Japan's emperors on the wall) . . .

. . . but I had to leave when they began the professional job of putting on the kimono.

We took some shots at Morito Shrine before eating lunch and heading back home.

After the Shinto ceremony, they got all the kids together for a photo shoot. Hirota-san, the photographer knew enough to be incredibly quick in getting their attention and blasting away.

The girls loved being the center of attention.

It was like little Kyoto in Akiya.

And then it was time to go home. m was thrilled at the whole deal. She ate a huge meal at lunch, but the tight obi meant that it never made it to her stomach, so she was greatly relieved to take the kimono off. (Of course, after we made the rounds of the neighbors to show off.)

While I ponder the cosmic question of whether to do chemotherapy in order to add 5 percent to my five-year survival rate, I have nothing to do but to post pics from last weekend's shichi-go-san festival, celebrating kids aged three, five and seven (m will be 7 in January so she fits into the last category). There's no shopping street or commercial support for Akiya's shrine, so everyone in the village chips in to help.

The Chrysanthemum and the Chopstick

M, her glass of gold wine, and an early autumn sunset.

The farmers' food stalls are heavily stocked, as are the fish markets especially with fish like mackerel and sardines getting fattier with the colder water. A few days ago, I had a craving for octopus, so we picked a fresh one up at the local market. How fresh? Well, the tentacles were clinging onto my hand tightly enough that I had to use my other one to pull it off and drop it into the pot. I love these things but they're a pain to clean, picking out the beak and peeling the head off the guts. They are much easier to handle after they've been boiled. I cut the poor dude, who's turned from a dull gray to a blushing red, into little pieces, and dropped him into a sauce of onion, garlic, tomatoes, red wine, etc., then added the octopus juice from the boiler pot along with rice. The finished product was as close to Portuguese octopus rice as I can get it. Thank god the girls also like tako.

 Yesterday, I took the girls to Koyasu, the village I wrote about in the last post. We stopped at the farm at the very top and bought chrysanthemum blossoms and a kind of potato I've never seen before, the size of small creek stones. The woman who runs the farm (the farmess?) explained how to cook the blossoms, and we ended up standing around in the late afternoon sun, chatting and nibbling on various things for a while. She even had her son run and fetch the tree pruner so she could cut down some jujube fruit, called natsume in Japanese, that we could taste. Unfortunately, bugs had already beat us to them, so we'll have to wait until next year.

Back home, M boiled the chrysanthemums. We had them with a slight vinegar/shoyu marinade along with the creek-stone potatoes that M had cooked in the rice.

One step at a time

Koyasu no sato is a village--actually a scattering of very small farms among the hills behind us. I haven't done much exploring before today, but I stumbled upon this raised path through a marsh of wildflowers.

It's been two weeks since the operation, and though it hurts a bit at night when it's hard to find the right position, I feel pretty good. Good enough, in fact, to put my patched up lungs through some paces. The last week has been a weird one weather-wise: we had a typhoon that went right by, but unlike past typhoons the winds were from the north and the hills blocked them off. So we had a very calm sea instead, though with pouring rain and cold. We spent the weekend with the wood stove going all day for the first time this year. Then yesterday morning brought us a rainbow.

And today is a cloudless beauty. Fuji is snow-capped for the first time this year, and it is very warm though windy. m's class at school was going on a hike up Mt. Ogusu (the very large hill just behind us, which is the highest point on the Miura Peninsula, and thinking of that stimulated me to go on a short hike of my own.

They call Koyasu no Sato a village, but it's more a scattering of very small farms among the hills. For years, it was only accessible by a winding one-lane road until a huge housing development went up nearby, and tunnels were built, trees were downed, and convenience stores popped up. Amazingly enough, I found today, a lot of the farms have survived and have pretty much maintained their isolation, since you  have to get off the main road and take some of the twisting narrow turns before you get to them--and it seems that most people just zip by (including me, until today).

It was really like stepping back in time. The valleys are completely overgrown, and the small farms are mostly hidden away. I could almost believe they were Tennessee moonshiners hiding from the law. And when I say "small farms," I mean small. Some of the plots were three meters wide and five meters long, which is closer to a garden, but there would be a whole string of plots of this size, with autumn eggplants still to be harvested, while the winter crop of turnips, broccoli and other vegetables were just beginning to appear. They're all maintained by hand, and I have no idea how they make a living. There were a few unmanned vegetable stands where people are expected to take what they want and leave their money. (I could put together a pretty good map of 20 or so of these nearby that we regularly frequent. Only one claims to have a peeping camera.) But these stalls of Koyasu, I am sure, have never, ever been visited by a drive-by customer; only someone who knew where he was going would make it by here.

While I was climbing the last bit of road past the last farm, a car pulled up and parked, and presuming that he knew where he was, I asked him if he knew the mountain path to Akiya, which I've heard of but never been able to find from the Akiya side. He didn't know. He was a Tokyoite who was renting one of the plots to grow stuff ("Difficult," he said, "for a beginner.") and he passed me on to the old farmer lady who was bringing him straw mulch for his field. I walked with her back to her own vegetable stall, where she explained the route, but insisted that no one has walked it in years, so it was too overgrown to get through. Of course, I was much too stubborn to believe her and ended in the forest 20 minutes later with no discernible path in any direction.

Reluctantly, I stumbled back out of there, and found another route home. It was funky in some part, with the little creek bordered by a fence so massive it could keep wild boars at bay, and steel bridges that went nowhere. But it later turned into the very nicely done walkway through a marsh that led back down to the main road and the cars zipping by.  It had started out as a short hike, but ended up as a three-hour hike to another century and back to the beach. I'm thinking of going back tomorrow, even though I'm feeling a little sore.