Azumino-Shi

Day 45

Today we left Nagoya to travel to Nagano, I am super excited for our time in Nagano as we have some really cool day trips planned! From Nagoya to Nagano there is a train that takes about 3 hours but it’s very scenic! Nagano borders the Japanese Alps so we went through lots of tunnels through the alps and ran alongside rivers with mountains dusted with snow so three hours actually went pretty quickly!

Arriving in Nagano we dropped our bags off and caught the train to Obasute which is only about 20kms outside of Nagano city but it’s like stepping into a completely different era. Nagano city is quite buzzy and it has lots of trendy bars and eateries but just outside the city it’s a completely different story.

As we arrived and got off the train it felt like we had gotten off at a ghost station with just the two of us there we were wondering if we were at the right place! Wondering down through the hilly outcrop we were surrounded by beautiful views of the mountains and Nagano city in the background but most importantly - rice paddies! Terraced down the hill the rice paddies stretched for a few hundred metres alongside cherry blossom farmland and grape crops amongst others that we couldn’t identify! Small houses made of wood and thatched roofs lined the mountainside it was incredibly picturesque!

As we were enjoying the scenery we saw a few farmers out working on the land and one in the smallest tractor we had ever seen it must have taken him a millennia to complete all his fields! Another with a small machine that appeared to be prepping the ground for planting. The rice paddies are quite marshy and as a result the farmers have built irrigation systems that have small channels of water that run on the sides of the fields to keep the fields boggy. As we went for a closer look I was rather startled when a frog jumped out of no where! Then all of a sudden there were about 10 of them all hopping around the rice field! I guess it actually makes perfect sense for them to be here as it’s nice and damp and cool with lots of choice for bugs but I just hadn’t really thought about it so I was very surprised when we started spotting them!

Meandering through the farmland enjoying the warmth of the sun we eventually headed back to the train station - up a bloody huge hill to travel back to Nagano city to settle in for the night!

Day 46

Today we visited the largest Wasabi farm in Japan- Daio wasabi farm, it’s so large that it produces 150 tons of wasabi a year- I can’t even get my head around that large of a number!

Despite the farm being in Nagano prefecture it is huge so it took us about three hours to get there which comprised of two trains and then a 45 minute walk.

Greeted by a wasabi ice cream truck we felt like we had to try it! It was actually surprisingly nice apart from the fresh wasabi paste on top which burned my mouth off so I quickly scraped this off and enjoyed the rest of the ice cream!

Wondering around the wasabi fields was quite the sight! Wasabi effectively grows in a steam and what’s special about this wasabi farm is that all the water that passes through the farm is spring water from the Japanese alps that flows tactically through the farm! It’s very impressive!

Vast fields with little green plants dotting the landscape it was quite the operation! Reaching the best view point we had a nice view of the farm with the alps in the background, sitting down and enjoying the view we watched a few of the farmers out in the field picking the wasabi and working on the farm. A lot of the wasabi is covered in a black netting that is to protect them from the sun as wasabi is apparently very sensitive to direct sunlight once it’s developed past a certain stage!

After taking it all in we wondered through the shop and saw some wasabi wine which we felt like we HAD to try, once we got back we tried this and it was actually very interesting. It was just very weak wine with a really subtle taste of wasabi, I don’t think it would become my regular drink but it’s always good to try new things!Read more