Strawberry Season in Japan

This weekend was uncharacteristically gray and rainy. It felt more like Brussels than Yokosuka’s usual sunshine and mild temperatures! Shortly after we arrived last year, we took the train south to Tsukuihama Tourist Farm on a similarly rainy day, and this year we got there in a fraction of the time in our little red Sienta.

Fruit in Japan is expensive and relatively hard to come by in the quantities my kids are used to eating, so 30 minutes of all-you-can eat strawberries for ¥2,000 per person sounded like a pretty good deal. These candy-like berries are about ¥100 or more each at grocery stores and produce stands!

The farm wasn’t too crowded at all, possibly because we were huddled up and leaning into the wind to make our way over to Greenhouse Number 3. In the surrounded hills, bamboo waved in the wind and we heard an occassional fire of gunpowder to scare birds away from the crops. Pop! Pop! Pow!

The lady collected our tickets and handed us each a cup of sweetened condensed milk with a tray for our strawberry tops—so tidy!

When I was pregnant with Isaac, I ate 100 tiny strawberries in one of these over in Izu. These berries are much bigger, but just as sweet. How many berries can four Kruegers eat in half an hour?

Isaac kept announcing his strawberry tally, and Eloise and I kept getting distracted and forgetting. The rain pattering on the tarp overhead, the greenhouse rattling in the wind, a tiny Japanese toddler with two very delighted parents a couple rows over—it was very pleasant. I think Elo and I ate 40-50 each, maybe more. Chris had 75. Isaac won with 120 strawberries. He started feeling uncomfortable around strawberry 100 but, being 12, did not let a little thing like a distended, overstuffed stomach keep him from eating until the full 30 minutes was up.

Waddling back down the hill to our car we could again hear the Pop! Pow! nearby.

“That’s actually the sound of people exploding from eating too many strawberries,” said Chris.

“It sounds like the cannon in the Hunger Games,” Isaac said, “but instead of Hunger Games it’s the Full Games.”

So very full, everyone agreed, purchasing strawberry jam from the produce stand and staggering over to our berry-colored car. Let’s do it again next month!