Japanese BBQ & Mount Fuji

Our days at the mountain house have been so magical and an experience into a culture so steeped in tradition.

At 6pm every evening a cute Japanese song comes over the loud speaker from the village below and the music wafts up to greet us like a rising mist from the valley. This is to announce to us and the rest of the community that it is the end of the working day in the fields around us and that dinner is soon on the table. Kens 90 year old mother is ready to eat and as she is the head of the family that's what time we all eat ...

But today is extra special as we are being treated to a Japanese BBQ on the front deck with Mount Fuji as the backdrop.

Good things come to those who wait and me wanting to work for my keep was let's loose on some gardening,  I offered to trim a pine hedge that had spring up a meter too high in the front garden and starting to hide THAT view so with a blunt saw, and trimmers I persist and several blisters later the view is reinstated.

Ken is mowing the lawn with an little electric toy mower and with ALL his safety outfit on he looked more like a spaceman, Ken is more at home in front of a computer!!!

Meet some great locals while I was in the front garden pruning the hedge and before you know it we are all invited to some neighbours places for garden and house tours over the next couple of days. Hiroko was amazed and said that they have been coming up country for the past several years and have not managed an invite but me being me will befriend everyone...

Over the next few day while we were out walking the lanes is was like we were royalty and the local cars would slow down and wave to the 2 Aussies. The old market gardner over the front lane I also befriended and got to walk around his plot, he had pretty good English and before you knew it I was bringing home veggies for the family, Hiroko didn't know that he even spoke English.

So after the gardening was finished Ken sparks up the portable BBQ on the front lawn and with a blow touch and a Japanese fan it is not long before the charcoal is smoking and food is sizzling.

Tonights BBQ dinner is very casual dinner still in our work cloths and is at a more appropriate hour as the sun is still very high over Mount Fuji and with several beers in all hands and a happy 90 year old mother in a chair dinner is served late on the deck and around the BBQ.

The BBQ was more of a as it is cooked you would eat it and than other foods are then cooked. We started with boiled salted soybeans in their pods with a beer or three, so a bit similar to a Aussie BBQ!!! The furry pods 50 mm long are warm and you squeeze the 3 or 4 salty beans directly into your mouth, a great salty warm snack with a beer a great way to start. The whole skewered local freshwater fish and sardine are first on the BBQ and the smell is devine, got to say it was a bit trick eating fish off the bone with chopsticks but one soon masters the art! or at least with a few beers no one seams to notice a way-would finger or two too help....

Followed by high altitude corn basted with soy sauce and the flavour was so sweet. Burnt potatoes that you cracked open and smothered in butter, long baby green pepper cooked on the stove in mirin, soy sauce, sake and bonitto flakes ( the magical 4 ingredients ) then roasted on the BBQ.

Zucchini rounds, rice balls painted with soy sauce during the cooking processed they were crispy and also yum. 

Cold pumpkin cubes that had been boiled in bonitto flakes, sake, mirin, sugar,salt and soy sauce, they had such a delicate hit of flavour and great as a side salad + fresh green salads, young ginger shoots blanched in boiling water for a minuet then pickled in mirin and sake. What a taste sensation this BBQ was.

Before you knew it, it is 10pm and the sky has turned into a bluster of pinks and muted mauves and Mount Fuji starts to again disappears into the mist of the nights sky so with a local Japanese scotch in hand admiring the view and still sitting around the fire to keep warm than followed by a hot Japanese  bath what a great way to finish a day.