Cherry Picking in Nanbu

What is my favorite fruit? Cherries. I LOVE CHERRIES! I remember climbing up cherry trees in Ukraine when I was little and picking cherries from…possibly our neighbors’ trees, or some random trees in town:)

Anyway, as you already have an idea Misawa is small town in the middle of a very rural area. That’s the side of Misawa that I love. 

On a hot, hot day in July… “three green and speckled frogs”….okay, okay, one of my friends suggested to go to Nanbu town to a cherry garden.  Nanbu is about 1 hour away from Misawa.  After a dozen of windy roads, a one way gravel road, we finally arrived to you destination.

At this place, you pay for unlimited eating of cherries per hour:) I don’t remember exactly, but I think we paid 900 yen (around $11.70) for adults and 500 yen ($6.50) for kids 6 and older, 200 yen ($2.60) for kids under 6, but older than 3. When we arrived, the owner took us down to the area where we were supposed to pick as many cherries as we could handle in an hour. Plus, we could pick some and take about a 2 pound (1 kg) box for $6.50 home.

It was an absolutely beautiful sight—hundreds and hundreds of cherry trees, covered with bright red delicious fruit.

 

Some branches were low enough for Mark to reach, although he wasn’t a fan of cherries.

Katya and Alex, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough of them..well, actually after about 40 minutes, they had enough. I did too:)

The kids were able to climb up the ladder to reach the ripest cherries.

Mark posing for the camera.

This is what I look like stuffed with cherries:)

   

Katya continues the tradition of putting cherries over her ears like earrings. There is a picture somewhere from when I was 11 years old standing on our balcony in Lviv with cherries hanging over my ears (wearing a T-shirt with the Canadian flag on it-haha).

It was hot…. In these pictures, Japan looks like Ukraine to me:)  

  How did they taste, you might ask? DELICIOUS! Some trees produced especially sweet cherries, so we tried to stick with them. These cherries tasted very differently from the ones I get at the commissary, that come from Washington state. They were lighter color, some even orange, a lot like the ones from Ukraine. Showing the kids were cherries grow, picking them and being in the gardens ourselves was totally worth the price.

Hopefully next week I’ll be able to go peach picking:)