About two weeks ago Claudia, Yuki and Yoshida-san went with me into the hills of the northern part of the province Okayama. Yoshida-san is a collogue of my professor and is in charge to drill and maintain our wells we use for our experiments. Since we asked him, whether he would know a good place where we can purchase cheap fruits and vegetables, he offered us to give us a lift into the hills where many farms are located.
Our first stop was in a random village close to the airport of Okayama. We discovered a vineyard so different from those I have seen in Europe or Australia: they were mostly in glass houses and ONE single plant is just huge compared to the wine in Europe. We asked a farmer for direction and he invited us into his glass houses:
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| Yuki in front of the vineyard glass house. |
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| A single wine plant! |
Yoshida-san drove his little mint-green Nissan March further up and into the hills. After a 30 minutes drive he suddenly stopped in a curve and turned sharp to the right to drive up a rather tiny road with a extremely steep slope.
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| little road to the village. |
We would normally have definitely passed by this road - it honestly looked like
it will end in a dead end but we were pretty amazed that at the top we
discovered a village where we only met people of age 60+. Our target was a organic restaurant that is lead by an old couple. The husband is called Shinichirou (新一郎) and his wife 好美. While Shinichirou was preparing the food his wife showed us the huge garden they manage together and that only five days of the week. It was great fun to taste all the different herbs and strawberries they grow and also learn about the Japanese names of the plants, even though I've already forgotten them (or let's say: I can't recall them - they are probably still somewhere burried in my brain). Yoshida-san was in the mean timing enjoying him self in the little garden house.
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| View from parking spot down to the village. |
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| One of the green houses |
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| Part of the garden |
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| Yoshida-san |
Shintarou told us that he is already older than 70 which we could hardly believe. He was so energetic and jumped around, always smiling. He brought us an old map book (more than 20 years old) where he kindly asked us to sign on the page where Germany was printed on and mark the lace on the map where we are from. So Claudia and I marked Dresden and a little village in Thüringen.
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| The map |
The meals were just stunning delicious! We first got served fresh, slightly salty butter with still warm fresh tiny gold brown rolls. Next came a ham salad on fresh garden vegetables, followed by a simple but rather delicious onion soup with a perfect amount of crème in it. The main dish was roasted chicken with beans, carrot and a bitter leaf. As climax brought Shinichiro at the right moment, when we were just half done with our main dish, fried potatoes (still with skin - yes Oma, still with its skin - I told you that this is the best way to eat it) and baked with cheese (I think it was Gauda). While we enjoyed the various dishes, both of them were explaining the things we ate just in that moment: where they grow it, what it needs, which nutrients it has and so on, all outside in a garden on top of a hill somewhere in Okayama.
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| Butter with fresh rolls |
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| Ham salad |
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| Onion soup |
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| main dish: roasted chicken |
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| climax: cheese potatoes |
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| Yoshida-san and Yuki |
Fortunately, I didn't forget to take pictures of the amazing herbal tea we
got served with a final salad and lemon sorbet cake which was definitely
one of the best cakes I ever had (and so far I can only remember one
cake in Regensburg about 8 years ago which may rank in the same league).
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| final salad |
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| Epilogue cake! |
We said farewell and "hope to see you again! We certainly will come back!" to both of them before Yoshida-san decided to takes us to a small bakery, in a tiny village and the edge of a forest. By the way, the whole menu we ate costed about 4.800 Yen per person.
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| Saying farewell! |
To reach the bakery we drove about one hour back to Okayama. Claudia and I fell several times asleep while Yuki at the front seat forced himself to stay awake and talk to Yoshida-san. We got lost and needed to consult my GPS to find the way to the bakery. The shop was pretty small: a natural women in terms of not wearing any make up in probably her 30th sold us some self made bread, which was a bit hard, but since Yoshida-san paid for eat there was no way to complain about it. The best thing was that I drank so much herbal tea at the restaurant that really needed to go to the toilet. I asked the shop woman if I could use the toilet in her house and she showed me where her compost toilet was. Her husband worked at a close-by field and her about 5 years old daughter played in front of the house. The toilet was amazing and I couldn't help but taking a picture of it. I'm terrible sorry that I'm going to show you a picture of a toilet after all the good food, but life lives from contrasts, isn't it?
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| Entrance to the bakery |
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| Compost toilet d(^.^) |
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| Recycling paper backs!!! d(^.^) |
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| Awesome spider close to the toilet |
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All in all we had a really great day thanks to Yoshida-san and I really want to thank him for this. I hope to go back to the restaurant in July/August with two great friends who are going to visit me.
