Mountain Barbie

I think I'm getting into this summer vacation business a little too deeply, which would explain why I've been too lazy to write anything for the last month. Since there hasn't been a real need to go to school for actual lessons, there hasn't been big blocks of free time in the afternoons where I usually write stuff. I've been bludging at home instead ^^

The kids aren't so slack though. Most of them still go to school everyday for club activities, or go to cram schools to mug for upcoming tests. It's almost like not having a break at all.

The lot of us at the Carrot had it good though. Our section head brought us to a nice family-run restaurant in the Naganuma neighbourhood for a summer lunch. I thought it was just a regular restaurant, albeit one with a genuine wood-fired pizza oven. I wasn't expecting it to look more like a cozy open air campsite.


The owner makes everything from scratch, including his own pizza dough, and puts it all together on the spot. Sure, the toppings were typical of pizzas in Japan, but it was really nice to have freshly made thin-crust pizzas straight out of the oven. None of that thick crust pan pizza business here.


Just because this is Japan after all, the pizza was accompanied by kakiage (tempura battered vegetables and seafood) and flash-fried french beans with garlic and soy sauce. All the vegetables were either grown in the neighbourhood or in the owners own vegetable patch, because people are hardcore like that here, ya know.

No summer camp would be complete without meat sizzling on the barbecue, and sure enough, the charcoal was soon alight and the smell of grilled beef filled the camp. A couple of cold beers on the side really hit the spot.

The guy manning the grill was the same one I mentioned a few posts back in the town mascot suit. He's not too bad with a pair of tongs too. ^^

A hike around the hillside in between courses took us through a bamboo grove where I had sudden mental images of ninja showdowns, a shady forest filled with wild lilies, and a field filled with buckwheat plants, which I'm told bursts into flower in the fall. More total hardcore-ness followed because we were all treated to soba hand made from buckwheat grown in that very field as a finishing touch to our meal.

There really is a difference between store-bought, machine made dried soba. Or maybe it was the cold dipping sauce on a hot day that made the noodles seem extra tasty. It was here that I also found the answer to the perplexing question of what to do with the pot of hot water I was presented with in that soba restaurant back in Nagano. It's actually the water that the noodles have been boiled in, which apparently contains all the nutrients that were leached out of the noodles during cooking. This "soba-yu" is meant to be mixed with whatever dipping sauce is left in your cup, then drunk to improve circulation and lower blood pressure. And it's true!

Before we could explode from the food, it was time to go. I had no doubt I would have been able to roll down the hillside for all the good food I'd had, but of course I took the more comfortable option of going home by car. I really should have used the GPS function on my phone to pinpoint our actual location so I can find my way back here the next time, but alas, too much beef, beer and buckwheat sadly dulled my reason and I'll have to rely on the kindness of less directionally challenged friends the next time I feel like hillside dining.