In Japan they call strawberry picking “strawberry hunting.” There are harvest experiences for all kinds of fruit all year round, not just strawberries, but strawberries have to be the best of them, right?
We booked a strawberry-picking farm, and when we got there we all gathered in a place like this first.
There were plenty of souvenirs too. This is where they assign you a greenhouse, and then you head over. There are a lot of greenhouses, and I’m guessing that’s because once one has been picked over, it has to be left alone until the strawberries are ready again, so it takes some managing.
The greenhouses
There was a bit of a queue, but you get in quickly. Looking at the licence plates, people really had come from all over.
The sky
The weather was lovely.
The vibe in there
The strawberries are still growing, and you just eat whichever ones look good.
Once you’re in you only get 30 minutes, and you’re not allowed to pick strawberries to take home.
A strawberry goes soft once you’ve touched it, so if you touch it you have to eat it.
A greenhouse like this
Strawberries like this
Strawberries like this
Strawberries and condensed milk
In Korea people often dip them in sugar, but in Japan you dip them in condensed milk.
Strawberries
The great thing about eating them right after you pick them is that the flavour goes all the way to the white part at the top. It wasn’t that the white bit tasted bad, it was probably just that they’d been picked too early. And since you get to choose them yourself, you can pick out only the big, sweet ones and eat as many as you like. The trouble is that they give you 30 minutes, but ten is enough to leave you stuffed. When you think about it that way, there isn’t much price difference between eating them from the supermarket and eating them at a picking farm. On top of that there wasn’t much variety, and since they aren’t kept refrigerated you can’t eat them cold, which is a bit of a shame. If you go about once a year, though, I think you’d come away very happy.
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