The Kamiyama farmers' market was only 5 mins drive from our house and employs some very lovely people who were always engaging with Hopper and uber friendly. We were there fairly regularly as we passed it getting anywhere out of town and also because, well, everything was so fresh and the seasons for certain produce changed frequently. It was also just plain exciting to see what was on offer.
Inside was a giftshop selling crafts and specialty foods, a small restaurant selling a variety of noodle dishes, a cold case with local made tofu, sushi, and snacks, and the ever exciting ice cream counter. A separate area located in front had all the fresh produce, plucked so lovingly in the couple days before, brought in by local farmers. It also serves as a rest stop on the highway so there's bathrooms, picnic tables and plenty of parking.
We were lucky enough to be around for eggplants, shiitake, sudachi limes and at the end yuzu limes (which look more like grapefruits than limes), sweet potato, red chillies, Asian pear, popo (a fruit that looked like a small chubby rotten banana but had knobby irregular seeds throughout and tasted like a mango banana hybrid, so so delicious and the season lasted but a week), mandarin, purple corn, green beans, some other totally foreign fruit that I believe was called bobo, and persimmon (kaki). But to name a few.
Funny thing is that a few of these are specialty items sold in other parts of Japan for high prices but were available at the source for peanuts, and things like popo are too fragile to transport so are unknown in other parts of the world. (We came home to find a popo gift and were unsure what to do with it, it looked rotten and brown and not very appealing; thanks Keiko for making sure we got to experience it.)
We sort of gorged really. And never have I ever had such tasty firm shiitake. And the sudachi is so delicious and coveted that it goes on everything from oysters to tofu to soup. You can truly understand the nature of regional Japanese cuisine when the ingredients are so astonishingly delectable.
Oh, and the views from here are spectacular, so it was always so nice to get a meal or a snack or even just a drink from the myriad machines and sit outside at the picnic tables and stare at the mountains.
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| udon and ice cream |
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| hanging around |
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| local made cakes |
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| ordering from the restaurant while really wanting something else |
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| ice cream flavors: sudachi, sweet potato, green tea (2 varieties), black sesame, strawberry, yuzu, lemon, udon (noodle) |
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| best tofu I've ever eaten, hands down |
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| lovely employees |
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| what's ripe and ready |
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| and you can see who grew it (left kaki, right limes) |
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| popo! this was picked before it was really ripe so it needed couple more days. best to eat it when it falls to the ground all speckly yellow brown and slightly ripping open |
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| bobo! (or larva?) |
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| soooo many seeds, must be spit out, very interactive fruit not to be eaten on 1st date |
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| skin, fruit, seeds (hopper thought it was a caterpillar, tried not to think about that while eating, very mild flavor) |
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| the view, and mama's great parking job |
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| residency posters put up around town, Nik's photo in middle, of course more ijshun! |
