Sunday, May 3, 2009

Mountain Vegetables

Yesterday we went out with some old friends and some new friends to the nearby mountains to look for some mountain vegetables. This is a past time for many Japanese and quite similar to mushroom hunting. But this time we were looking for tree buds, or something like that.


If you look closely you can see the little bud at the top of the branch Travis is pulling down. We guess they are good when deep fried, but we'll have to try it out.


Next we had lunch near Lake Towada, a crater lake in the mountains. The place, being a tourist trap, was jam packed with people on vacation. This weekend is the big travel weekend in Japan.

Sorry, we didn't take a ride in the Swan paddle boats, much to our dismay!!

After our delicious lunch we ventured out on a river walk through a scenic gorge. There were some nice "scenic rocks" on the way including this "elephant rock."


Obviously, since it is at the top of a mountian, there was quite a lot of snow--quite a lot!



Finally, we finished off the night with a climatic ending of eating whale sushi! We know you will all hate us for it, but we promise it was for scientific purposes--promise!



Oh yes, we did have a visit to an Onsen but didn't happen to take any pictures of that!
All in all, a pretty adventurous day.

No comments: