after breakfast Setsuko and me headed off on
our bikes (Hennie without her bags was a tad wobbly to start off with!) firstly to the bike shop where I dozed in the chair, sipping a yummy cup of peach tea (must find some to bring home!) while she finished off some work duties. We
visited her friend across the street who makes traditional sweets - her
grandfather started the business over 80 years ago… fine rice flour and lotsa sugar with red or white bean paste and pressed into a fish shape and then given a pretty spray of bright pink
colouring.
Setsuko
explained to me that this beautiful ball that was hanging outside a shop showed that the sake was ready! It
used to be a sake shop, and when the sake is first made, this ball is made of
green pine branches and shaped into a beautiful ball - then when it is all
dried out it shows that the sake is ready!
Then we
were on our bikes to first visit a shrine to an engineer that built a canal to
pipe water over 30kms away into the valley to allow them to grow rice - it only
runs during the time that the farmers need water for their rice crops… this has been going on since 1774… !
We went
to visit her friend, working an organic farm… we went and looked at some of vegies growing
- lettuce, beans, zucchini and sweet potato. We
had to work for our lunch - it involved tying 3 onions on one end of piece of
string and another three on the other end - these were then hung up over a
bamboo pole to dry… we certainly got
thru quite a pile and felt that we earned our lunch of beans, peas and rice,
snack peas, lettuce all so very fresh and very yummy.
From
there we pedalled our way over to Setsuko's rice field to check on her
seedlings… We went
for a swing over the river then off we went pedalling again, this time up a
hill and eventually to an very old home which was also once part of the sake
business … it is now govt owned and
is used for festivals… there are cherry
trees along the river there and it’s a place for the locals to get together for
cherry blossom time. Setsuko got the
kettle boiling and made us green tea and Daimoji's favourite food, rice
piklets filled with red bean paste.
Quite yummy.
Then we
rode over to where the canal previous mentioned is cut thru the mountain… the canal only flows slowly as it only loses 1m per 3 km… it was very interesting to
see that the after more 300 years, this canal continues to serve its original
purpose…
No comments:
Post a Comment