Fuki Finders!

Over the last couple of months, I've developed a fascination with sansai, or Japanese mountain vegetables. There are literally dozens upon dozens of varieties of sansai, but perhaps the most commonly encountered one is fuki-no-to, a little flower that pushes its way up through the snow during early spring in the mountains. They're traditionally eaten in one of two ways: mashed into a paste along with miso, which is then spread on rice, or by frying up the buds in a tempura batter. Hiroko and I headed to Niigata prefecture, about a three hour drive north of Tokyo, where our brother in law's mother showed us the ropes of finding and picking the little guys on our own.

A view of the town of Echigo-Yuzawa from atop the mountain.

Fuki-no-to hunting in an area between two runs.

Your intrepid narrator hoisting a fine specimen of our quarry.



Our herb-hunting mission took us to a ski resort, now closed for the season, where we hiked up the dormant ski-runs and through the neighboring forests for likely harvesting areas.





Bingo! Fuki-no-to are at their best just before they bloom, and that means finding them along the edges of snowfields.



At one point, we were so engrossed in our picking that we barely noticed we were standing back-to-back with an elusive kamo-shika, or Japanese antelope-deer. They're a protected species, so this was a really exciting find for a couple of city-slickers like ourselves.





Our haul for the day!