bits and pieces: July 2007

桜んぼう狩り(sakuranbougari) basically means cherry picking. Went on this really fun activity with my colleague (ルイちゃん　ありがとうね！)and his high school friends Mahiko and Yoshiko (綺麗で、可愛くて　＾O＾). I would have never ever found out about such an activity by myself. It's seasonal, and farms open their orchards to the public for fruits picking at a fee. The area we went to is pretty famous for wines. We passed by lotsa grape vineyards along the drive in Yamanashi (山梨県). Cost us about 2000yen each for 40mins (though we took longer than that. I think we clocked an hour or so).Another friend of mine once told me that he went for strawberries picking before in Japan too. I believed it's the same thing! Though I haven't been able to locate the place where he went. I would wanna go try again some time. Cherries are plucked off the trees and eaten, and you don't have to worry about pesticides since they don't use any (which I guess is one of the reasons why cherries are really expensive). However, these Japanese cherries are different fromthose I've eaten.. they aren't as red. The fruit has plenty of flesh and is also jucier. Oh ya, Yamanashi has this place pretty famous fortheir udon. It was actually a special type of udon that is flatter than the normal ones. There was a namef or it.. but I can't remember.. *sweatdrops* We had to queue for almost an hr and a half, but the wait was worth it!　おいしかったよ！