Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

3/11/2006, Bairin Park, ume blossoms, all about ume

After reading about it, Akemi suggested we go to a certain park fairly near Aioi.  The place is a huge orchard of ume trees spread out over a mountain.  At the base of the mountain is a huge field of canola plants with their beautiful yellow flowers.

All about ume

Ume is a Japanese fruit.  It is pronounced like {OO-may}.  It is about an inch (2.54 cm) in diameter.  They are usually cured in some way, but they're always very sour.  People compare them to plums or apricots, but the fact is that they are nothing like either one.  Ume is harder, smaller, rounder, and much more sour than a plum or apricot.  You can read more about ume in Wikipedia's article on ume or see a picture of the fruit, the flower, or ume-boshi (also described in this article).

Visiting Bairin Park

In case you're wondering, the name Bairin means "ume forest" or "ume farm".  To get there, we took a 10 minute train ride from Aioi to Aboshi.  Then, after a 40 minute wait, we rode a bus for 20 minutes.  There was a ¥500 (≈$5) entrance charge that included a cup of amazake (pronounced AW-ma-ZAW-kay), a sweet, non-alcoholic, warm, lumpy drink related to sake.  There were lots of shops near the entrance, but not many within the park, other than an eating area at the top.

The main reason for going there is to see pretty flowers and walk around in a beautiful environment.  While it was beautiful, the ume trees weren't blossoming much.  A few were.  I think it depends on the variety.  There are many varieties of ume with different colors of flowers and presumeably different blooming times.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the pictures

Walking into the park.  The people on the right are paying the ¥500 admission.

View from the mountain.

View from the mountain.

View from the mountain.

View from the mountain.

Ume trees.

Ume trees.

Ume trees.

Ume trees.

Ume trees.

People taking pictures of ume trees.

People taking pictures of ume trees.

Ume trees.

Ume trees.

Ume trees.

Akemi's lunch, a bento box with rice, an ume-boshi (pickled ume), and some other ume-related foods.

My lunch, plain old udon noodles with a cake of deep fried thin tofu (usu-age).  This is called kitsune-udon, for those who care.

Ume trees.

Ume trees.

A short movie that shows a little of the atmosphere in the park, as we were sitting relaxing on a park bench. (29 seconds, 648x480, 26.7 MB AVI file)

Akemi and me in the canola fields, at the base of the park.

Canola flowers are very pretty, yellow flowers.

The greens can be eaten and are pretty good.

Canola is used to make an oil that is pretty healthy.

Canola flowers.

A short movie that shows a little of the atmosphere in the canola fields. (22 seconds, 648x480, 20.5 MB AVI file)

<Previous     -     Index     -     Next>