This is Warabi, a kind of bracken (Photo: Tomoaki Sato)

Picking Mountain Vegetables

Sansai treasure hunting in the Yamagata mountains

Tomoaki Sato   - 2 min read

Late spring is the season for sansai (山菜). Sansai means mountain vegetables in Japanese. These mountain vegetables are loved for their "spring taste" by many people in Japan! I went to pick sansai in the mountains near Mamurogawa Town in Yamagata Prefecture. The local sansai hunters eagerly wait for the end of winter to go to the mountains and search for mountain vegetables. It really is like treasure hunting because it is not easy to find the mountain vegetables. To my great joy I found some warabi but veteran hunters find many types of sansai and they give part of their harvest to family, friends and people in their neighborhood. If you have never eaten sansai, why don't you come to Yamagata and have a try finding some while enjoying the beautiful scenery in the mountains?

Tomoaki Sato

Tomoaki Sato @tomoaki.sato

こんにちは!I was born in Mamurogawa town 真室川町,Yamagata prefecture 山形県.And I had lived here till graduation of high school.When I was junior college student,I worked as Jinrikisha 人力車 driver in Hida Takayama 飛騨高山,Gifu prefecture 岐阜県.Jinrikisha is Rickshaw. Hida Takayama is ...