Living in Japan makes me more aware and appreciative of seasonal fruits.
Japanese cherries also known as sakuranbo are best in mid June.
This year due to the harsh winter and lack of sunlight, cherries could not grow well in Nagano.
Hence, we travelled to Yamanashi prefecture which is beside Nagano prefecture for cherry picking.
The ride was around 2.5 hours to Yamanashi.
It was hot and humid on that day.
Summer has arrived!
We reached the cherry farm at around 2pm in the afternoon.
It costed 2000yen per person for 45mins which is kind of steep but in Japan a small packet of high quality cherries would cost just as much.
We were not allowed to bring any cherries home, just pick enough to eat.
Bags were not allowed in the cherry farm so we left our bags in the car instead.
Before we started picking, the farmer gave us a short introduction of the farm.
He taught us the correct way of picking and told us which cherry tree is in its best season.
There seem to be many different varieties of cherries.
After the introduction, we started picking up from the tree nearest to us.
Our strategy was to eat a few from each tree and find the best tree with the sweetest cherries.
After 20mins, we finally found our favourite tree and climbed the ladder to reach for the higher cherries.
I think I ate around 100 or maybe more.
They were some of the best cherries I have ever tasted .
Takashi was also very satisfied even though he was not that keen on cherries at first.
I spotted him popping 3 cherries into his mouth at one go.
We stopped at a cherry shop after the cherry picking where you could buy some to take home.
As you can see in the picture, a mere 300g costs at least 1000yen.
The high price is due to the low production quantity.
It seems that cherries are difficult to cultivate.
We bought a packet for my in laws as we thought they might want to try some Yamanashi cherries too.
We will come back again in mid July for peach picking. I love peaches too!
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