The Big Three-O

Last week, I turned 30. The night before my birthday, we went to our favorite local yakiniku restaurant. On my birthday proper, Becky prepared a mini-birthday cake, along with a hand-made crocheted Link, which she will admit was at one point intended to be a Christmas present! For my birthday weekend, we went to the art island, Naoshima, an amazing place that I will post about soon.

Mushroom Hunt

July 15 was the long awaited summer mushroom hunt at Mikiyama Forest Park. I say long-awaited because we signed up for the same event last October, but it was cancelled due to rain. Seventy-three percent of Japan is covered by mountains, and the innumerable mountain forests make it an extremely fertile ground for mushrooms. The fall is the best season for mushrooms and extremely ideal locations offer mushroom hunting tourism then. But the humid, post-rainy season climate in July also offers great conditions and many different species of mushrooms from the fall.

We joined 40 or 50 people, along with three guides, and scoured the forest in search of mushrooms. We quickly realized they were everywhere, and every person brought pack at least a handful to the forest education center.

The choice, edible mushrooms were used in a wild mushroom miso soup. The children took charge of mushroom preparation.

Much of the flavor of the mushrooms was overpowered by the miso, but subtle differences were distinguishable. More important than flavor, it was the many different textures that made each mushroom unique.

The end of the event consisted of the experts explaining the many mushrooms we discovered, and making sure we learned which were deadly and which were delicious.

Deadly!

Our mushroom guide was very nice to us throughout the day, and he gave us some mushrooms to take home! We cooked them alongside carrots, asparagus, and onions, put them in a curry sauce, and ate them with a pork chop. Delicious!

Road Trip to Miyazu

On July 14, we took went on an impromptu two-hour drive north to a part of Kyoto Prefecture on the Sea of Japan. Our destination was Miyazu City, home of Amanohashidate, a scenic sand bar that was once called one of Japan's three most beautiful views by the scholar Hayashi Razan in 1643. It really was a beautiful sight and a fun tourist attraction.

The meaning of Amanohashidate is bridge in heaven derived from the idea that if you look at the sand bar upside down it looks like a bride into the sky. We joined all the Japanese tourists in gazing at the sand bar with our heads through our knees. It was a little hard to imagine it, and we heard many choruses of Japanese tourists saying, “I don't get it!”

For dinner, we visited a restaurant called "Tondaya" that was highly rated on Tabelog. Apparently everyone else decided to end their day trips to Miyazu at Tondaya also, because we had to wait an hour to get a table! Fortunately the he wait was worth it. We ate a yummy beef dish, fresh grilled clams, and squid and eggplant tempura.