Kanzo Yashiki - Hinamatsuri's House!

Hello!

We meet again!

For now, we take a look at hinamatsuri, at Kanzo Yashiki! But first, what is hinamatsuri?
Hinamatsuri is a girl's day at Japan, celebrated every 3rd of March in Japan.

For every family with daughters, usually they will show a set of dolls, like in this picture!

There's so many of them, right?
Each dolls has their own meaning and duites!
For example, the two top is king and queen, under them is the "wise" man, and so on!

Now, after we got the basic idea of hinamatsuri, now we take a look at Kanzo Yashiki!
What is Kanzo Yashiki??

Well, Kanzo is a type of leaf that sweeter than a brewed. So the sweet taste from the tea is more natural. This type of tea is existed when back then, sweetener or sugar is expensive to get in Japan. So, they try to find another way to make the tea testes sweet.

They make this kind of tea in this very house!

This house have a advanced tech in this house too (back then), like bronze roofing, for strength.

And also, because of this, the owner of this house is very rich back then!

You can try this tea at outside of the Kanzo Yashiki! Be sure to try it out!

Thats all for this time, see you around next time!
-Irvan

Furouen - Japanese "Ume" Wonderland

Hello!

Long time no see!
Now we're back at some posting - and yes we have found an interesting one!

It's called "Furouen" park, which is famous for its "ume" - a Japanese plum.
"Furoen" literally means park of the eternal life, quite poetic, isn't it?

And this place is not far from Kofu Stations too, its a 10-15 min drive from Kofu Station, and you can get there by train too, about 15-20 min from Kofu Station, by JR Chuo Line.

This park is open from February until March, from 9 AM to 5 PM.

But what makes this park so interesting and special?

Glad you asked! Now we're going to talk about this park's feature!

First of all, this place full of "ume" trees - so many trees, at the full bloom season, which is around 10 March, this park is literally covered in "ume" trees and flowers. It's a breathtaking sight to behold! Be careful though - at the full bloom season, the park is full of people, so adjust your time to come here!

The "ume" in this park have so many species. Even the flower have same colour,
that doesn't mean that they are same species! Now, we don't know the exact number of how many "ume" tree species they have, but we can assure you it's so many that you can lost count.

These "ume" trees have their unique smell, and its quite nice! Be sure to smell it while you're there!

And because this park is located at one of the mountain in kofu, you can see the what we call the "Kofu bonchi", which literally means Kofu valley or basin. This park is one of the few place that we can see "Kofu bonchi" quite clearly, and we can see the mount Fuji from here too!

And that's it for today! See you again!



-Irvan

Korogaki - Japanese Traditional Dry Fruit!

Hello!

Back again with me- your enthusiastic Yamanashi blog writer! This time i would like to talk about "Korogaki"!

What is that?

It's a dry fruit from persimmon, or kaki in Japanese. Generally there are 2 types of kaki, the sweet one, and the non-sweet one. You can easily eat the sweet one, but not the non-sweet one.

So the Japanese back then thinks, "hmm, how do we eat the non-sweet one?"
Their answer? just make it dry!

This is korogaki's main characteristic, it's all sweet! there's no non-sweet korogaki!

And guess what?
Because its a dry fruit, you can enjoy this dry fruit 365 days! now thats what i call a bargain!

But, how do they make this?

It's a difficult and long process. After the harvest of the kaki fruit, the korogaki makers have to dry the kaki, by hanging it or by place at the tables or some sort. They have to dry the fruit according to the sunshine, so they cannot dry it everyday! now thats a lot of work!

But not just that! to make the fruit sweet, they have to kind of "press" the kaki fruit at the center, so the sweetness can appear from the fruit! and they do this one by one, everyday, every few hours. now this is a lot of work!

They do that everyday, almost for 2-3 months until its ready to sell!

Pretty complicated right?

Korogaki is naturally sweetened and didn't use any kind of preservative material, so its healthy, too!

This is a hidden gem from the Yamanashi Prefecture! i highly recommend this to you, readers!

See you another time!

-Irvan

Gyomu Supermarket - So Many Halal Certified Foods!

Hello! This time we went to Gyomu Supermarket (業務スーパー), which literally means "business supermarket". But don't worry, this supermarket is operate like other normal supermarkets in town!

The best thing about this supermarket is everything here is cheap! You won't believe the price! Because this is the "business supermarket", the price is meant to be cheap! Be sure to check this place!

Not only cheap, but at this supermarket they provide so many halal foods, which is handy for muslims! For example, they provide halal frozen chicken, beef, karaage, and ebi furai!

Not only halal foods, but for us (especially for the writer), they provide Indonesian foods too! Awesome! Here you can buy mie goreng and sambal!

This place is not too far away, it's 10 minutes away from Kofu Station!

Gyomu Super
1 Chome-9-26 Yumura, Kōfu-shi, Yamanashi-ken 400-0073, Japan
+81 55-225-6900

https://goo.gl/maps/Cd1aMhorPHz

Thats it for today, see you next time!

-Irvan

Takeda Jinja Trip

Hello everyone!! Replacing Pepi and Ocha for this year, we're Irvan and Aruni. Nice to meet you guys!

For this time, we went to Takeda Jinja, which is located at North of Kofu Station. This place is built as Jinja at 1919, and before that, this place is built and used as Takeda Clan's residence at 1519.

Not many of Takeda Clan's residence building is left, but the main part of residence still remain till now, used as a main part of the jinja.

You can pray here like usual jinja in Japan. In this place you can see Takeda Clan's playground for their children (back then), horse stables, lion statue, pond, and so on!

FUN FACT: The lion statue at the entrance of Takeda Jinja has 2 statues, the one on the left's mouth is shut, and the one on the right's mouth is open. In japanese hiragana, 'a' is the first alphabet and 'n' is the last. The opened mouth means 'a', which means 'the beginning' and the closed mouths means 'n', which is 'the end'. The reason they did that to thr statues is because the statues are used to keep evil spirits away.

Thats for today, see you at the next post!
-Irvan

First Time Harvesting and Tasting Ume

Last week we went once again to Furouen to participate in Ume-Harvesting. I had never seen ume in flesh before, other than in the state of umeboshi, so it was a whole new experience for me.

A first look on how ume looks

Because most of us did not know about ume at all, there was a teacher that taught us on how to harvest ume correctly, also there are some ume that should not be harvested.
Did you know that the red part of ume does not mean it is the sweet part, but only the tanning part because of the sun? I didn't. Hehe.

The teacher

Hearing the teacher's instructions

We were told to harvest at least 1Kg of ume. It was necessary for it to be that much, because later we were shown a demonstration on how to make jam out of ume. That's why on these photos, Pepi and I are seen to be crushing the ume.

Although it was hot, it was quite fun!

- Ocha

Ogino - Connecting Yamanashi Residents to Good Life

The other day, we went for a mini tour to one chain of one of the famous supermarkets in Yamanashi, which is Ogino. The one we visited was the newly opened one which located in Ise Town.

You can only see the "INO", but it's actually "OGINO"

When you go into the supermarket, the first thing that you could see is lots of vegetables, breads, and shelves; all of them are lined down beautifully and was really easy to see.

First look when you enter Ogino in Ise Town

What I immediately thought when I was touring around the supermarket itself was that this supermarket really gives a deep thought about how to make customers feel happy. For example, all of the shelves that I saw was really short, compared to other supermarkets that I've visited, so it became easier for people to reach stuff.

The shelves

Also, Things like sushi, sashimi (fresh raw fish), or also warm foods, all are freshly made here. So, they purposely made windows that make the customers could see what's happening background, so they know the foods are really fresh!

Fish section - They make also sashimi here!

Not only that, Ogino also occasionally holds cooking class for the customers!

Ogino's Cooking Class Flyer

What I can conclude from Ogino is, they really think about how customers feel. They are a good example of Japan's tourism motto, which is "Omotenashi", or Hospitality!

- Ocha