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Apple picking trip

Photos here.

We took an express train called Super Hitachi early in the morning from Ueno station to north, changed local train from Mito to Hitachi Daigo. There Masami jiji was waiting for us with his car, and we first went to Tsukimachi no taki ("Waiting for moon fall"), then soba (buckwheat noodle) lunch before apple picking.

Kids loved it and the carts they had at the orchard. We had lots of sample apples, variety of them, and left with gifts of freshly squeezed apple juice, etc.

We stopped by a hot spring to bath in several hot tubs both inside and outside. 

On the way to hotel in the evening, kids fall asleep, off course after working hard on picking apples and (pretending) driving carts. Caught in a traffic, it took us almost 2 hours to get to hotel. Checked in, had dinner at a family restaurant, we went back to hotel and shared a double bed with family of 4....!

The next day, after we enjoyed buffet breakfast at hotel, we drove to a sweet museum attached to a sweet factory. They had some collection of old sweets and candies' packages, where the sweets come from, how it transformed, etc. and at the end we could look over the factory. It was impressive to see how they make our favorite sweet, DENCHU and MITONOUME.The museum lead to their shop, off course, and we wondered around, made some purchases while munching on samples, and KINTSUBA along with tea.

We still had time until the train, so we then headed to a park called KAIRAKUEN which is famous for many plum trees. It has an old house called KOBUNTEI, which used to be a second house of domain lord. Some of the trees turned into autumn colors and the views from the house was beautiful. The house itself was well made and gorgeous. 

We then headed to Mito station, had lunch, and took train back to Ueno.


Comments

Myron said…
Your last two blog posts were exemplary!
And check out our blog posts of Hawaii.

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