Hamamatsu Flower Park (2) - Cherry blossoms & tulips

The feature of Flower Park at time this of year is the most beautiful “cherry blossom & tulip garden” in the world. They were in full bloom.

There were people here and there who took pictures and looked happy. I noticed many of them were from abroad as I heard Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, English, Italian, German and languages I don’t know. Flower Park may be one of the most international sightseeing spots in Hamamatsu.

The combination of cherry blossoms and tulips were surely beautiful, especially at the edge of the water.

Personally, I got more interested in combination of various kinds of tulips and flowers other than cherry blossoms. For example, this is combination of tulip “Huis Ten Bosch” and nemophila flowers. The petals of the tulips have serrated edges.

I was so interested in this kind of tulips that I had never seen before.

This is a combination with white hyacinth. The pink white tulips were very cute.

There were also combinations of tulips only.

These three colors may be very common.

A combination with nemophila again. These blue flowers were refreshing to see.

On the other hand, there was a passionate combination with silene caroliniana “Spanish Flamenco.”

I couldn’t stop taking pictures.

I was very impressed to see this gorgeous variety of tulips. According to the website of Hamamatsu Flower Park, they have 500,000 bulbs of 100 kinds of tulips planted in flowerbeds and pots!

Hamamatsu Flower Park (1) - Exhibition and Crystal Palace

Hamamatsu Flower Park is one of the most popular sightseeing spots in Hamamatsu. It is a huge botanical garden where you can enjoy different kinds of flowers all year round. However, spring is still the best season to visit there. Now the admission fee for adult is 1,000 yen but the park becomes admission free in July and August.

Last Saturday, I went there by bus. It took about an hour to get there from the bus terminal. Even in front of the park, you can see flowers like these.

Though it was about late afternoon, there were still many visitors near the entrance. The first thing I saw in the park was an exhibition of bonsai. This was the biggest bonsai I had ever seen!

Then, I went to a huge greenhouse “Crystal Palace." On my way there, I saw an object of mosaiculture or a horticultural art. In 2009, Hamamatsu Mosaiculture 2009 was held in this park, with 91 objects from 97 cities in Japan and abroad exhibited. This was the exhibition of Hamamatsu and called “Harmony of Smile.”

In Crystal Palace, you can always see colorful flowers.

This is from Balinese Garden in the palace.

These flowers were pretty.

Behind these, there was an ylang ylang tree. I remembered essential oil made from ylang ylang flowers.

This is from Mexican Garden.

And this tall tree is baobab, the tree described in Little Prince!

Simple buckwheat pancakes

Last night I made buckwheat pancakes with soy milk I bought at the farmer’s market the other day. The ingredients were these and a pinch of salt.

The recipe was like this. I referred to several recipes on the Internet and slightly changed the combination of ingredients.

1. Mix 125g of buckwheat, 250 of ml soy milk, and a pinch of salt in a bowl.
2. Mash a banana in the bowl with a fork, add 10g of baking powder, and mix well.
3. Heat the frying pan and pour in a little oil to coat the pan.
4. Pour in a half of the mixed ingredients.
5. Cook on both sides until golden brown.
6. Repeat 4 and 5 for the remaining half.

Though my pancakes were not golden brown exactly, but I was satisfied with them. They were moderately sweet with the banana. I wondered what kind of jam or syrup would go well with them, but they were good as they were.

Today, I made pancakes again. Then I used a cup (200cc) of oatmeal instead of a banana. They looked better, but I thought the ones I made yesterday tasted better.

Vegan sweets in April

Now is the season of cherry blossoms, and you can find many sweets related to them. The most famous one may be sakuramochi, which literally mean a cherry rice cake. In this stamp, you can see two different kinds of sakuramochi. The left one is in Kanto (eastern Japan) style, and the right one is in Kansai (western Japan) style.

Last month I introduced sakuramochi in Kansai style. Here in Hamamatsu, it is more prevailing than the one in Kanto style, and you can find it not only in Japanese-style confectionary stores but also in supermarkets and convenience stores. In fact, I had never eaten sakuramochi in Kanto style before because it is rather uncommon. However, I finally bought one in Shunkado (春華堂), one of the best-known confectionary stores in Hamamatsu. Their specialty is unagi (eel) pie, but they also make traditional Japanese sweets.

As with sakuramochi in Kansai style, this one was wrapped with a salted cherry leaf. Its scent was noticeable even before I opened the package. It was stuffed with adzuki bean paste, which was also the same as the one in Kansai style. The difference was that this sakuramochi was made from wheat flour, mixture of glutinous rice, starch, and salt, etc. while the other was made from rice flour. It looked like a pink crepe, but it was more elastic because of the mixture of different kinds of flour. It had an interesting texture. I thought the flavors of the cherry leaf and adzuki paste were not very different from those of the one in Kansai style. This sakuramochi was also good, but personally, I prefer the one in Kansai style.

In addition to cherry-related sweets, I found very springlike sweets in the basement of Entetsu Department Store. In the main building, there is a section “Enshu Gourmet” where foods produced in Enshu or eastern Shizuoka Prefecture are sold. Yesterday, I bought two sweets from Tamachi Baigetsu (田町梅月) . One of them was “Butterfly.”

This was a kind of sweet called nerikiri. It looked like marzipan but was made from sugar, white kidney beans, adzuki bean, yam, malt syrup, glutinous rice flour, agar, and gardenia for coloring. I have seldom seen an insect-shaped sweet like this, but it was pretty. When I tasted it, I regretted not having prepared tea because it was so sweet! It was surely supposed to be eaten with green tea.

The other one was “Dandelion” which was made from almost the same ingredients as “Butterfly”, but it didn’t contain yam. The flower and the leaves of the dandelion were made finely. This kind of sweet is called kanoko and consists of a ball of bean paste covered with azduki beans.

As I expected, it was also very sweet. But this time, I had green tea that I bought at JR Hamamatsu Station.

I have two kinds of Japanese tea at home. One is hojicha or roasted green tea, and the other is genmaicha or green tea with roasted brown rice. With “Dandelion”, I drank genmaicha, but it didn’t match the sweet! Genmaicha is tasty tea in itself with the flavor of rice, however, it wasn’t bitter enough to mitigate the sweetness! Ordinary green tea or black coffee may have been the best drink for it.

Drive to Horaiji (5) - Floating bridge in dream

After leaving Mokkulu, we didn’t drop in any other places in Aichi Prefecture but returned directly to Hamamatsu. Flowers in the mountain area were beautiful, and I though it was a pity that I couldn’t take pictures from the running car. But in Okuyama, where a large temple Hokoji is located, my mother stopped the car to let me take pictures. This is Okuyama Park with a wooden floating bridge on a pond. Beyond the trees, I could also see the pagoda of Hokoji Temple. Some cherry trees were almost in full bloom and looked splendid.

I walked on the long bridge called “floating bridge in a dream.” According to my mother, there are carps in the pond. But I was so absorbed in the cherry blossoms and other flowers that I didn’t notice them. I learned later that this park is lit up like other cherry-viewing spots during the night. You can enjoy a dreamlike view with cherry blossoms reflected on the surface of the water.

Hokoji Temple is a magnificent temple where visitors can experience zen meditation, for example. I think I’ll introduce the temple someday. This time, we left the place after I took pictures. After that, we dropped in the last destination, JA Topia Hamamatsu Farmer’s Market Mikatabara Store.

My mother often goes to this store. Recently, she has started drinking soy milk sold there. When I drank it at my parents’ house for the first time, I was surprised because it was much thicker compared with other soy milk available in ordinary supermarkets. It is expensive, but I think it is worthy to pay the price. So, I bought one bottle myself this time. The producer of soy milk is an old tofu shop Marumori (丸守) founded in 1897. In addition to this, I bought a pack of rice cakes with soy beans in them.

Now I still wonder how I should use this soy milk. I’m thinking of making buckwheat pancakes with it, but I’m not sure.

Drive to Horaiji (4) - Local specialties in markets

After leaving Horaiji, we dropped in a farmer’s market Kontaku Nagashino (こんたく長篠). In the same building, there was a big beef barbecue restaurant. So, I didn’t feel like taking a picture of the premises. But the farmers’ market itself was interesting.

As in farmers’ markets in Shizuoka Prefecture, there were many fresh vegetables and fruits sold at reasonable prices. But I was more interested in processed food. In Horaiji, we had a lunch set that included sashimi konnyaku. Konnyaku is one of the specialties in this mountain area in the eastern Aichi Prefecture, and they provided various types such as ball-shaped konnyaku, three-colored konnyaku, konnyaku noodles, and sashimi kyonnyaku. There was also sauce sold separately, and my mother bought it. Maybe it can be also used for some other food.

Near the shelves of konnyaku, they had dried shiitake and tea.

I found some products that looked delicious, but I intended to buy something in the next destination. It was Michi-no-eki Mokkulu Shinshiro located near Shinshiro IC of Shin-Tomei Expressway.

Inside of Mokkulu looked like a fashionable supermarket. It was crowded with people, especially families with children. I thought it was a nice place to spend the weekend. There were many kinds of local products including sweets, but I remembered that I had eaten too many sweets recently. So, I just bought a rice ball with nozawana or turnip greens to eat for dinner.

Beside the building of Mokkulu, there was a little shop selling goheimoshi. It is a specialty of the mountainous areas in Central Japan including Aichi Prefecture. The goheimochi we ate there was a typical type: a flat cake of mashed rice skewered and grilled with sauce, but it was bigger than those I had seen before!

In fact, the sauce of this goheimochi contained bonito broth. After I ordered two skewers of goheimochi, I had to wait for a while. Then I found that the sauce was on sale and read the label of ingredients. In many cases, the sauce of goheimochi is vegan, but not always!

After we finished eating goheimochi, we took a free foot bath near the parking area. It was very refreshing to soak my feet in hot water. According to their website, this water is from Yuya Spa with a history of 1,300 years.

Finally, we returned to our car. Then, my mother took out something she bought in the building. They were karinto manjyu or little fried buns with adzuki bean paste inside. She game me one of them. It was a simple sweet but was very good with the thick fried surface, smooth azuki paste, and the flavor of black sugar. I have to remember the shop’s name Sakaeya (さかえや) that made this karinto manjyu so that I can find it again.

Drive to Horaiji (3) - Prohibition of hunting and fishing

Horaiji Temple is a Buddhist temple founded in 703. A famous haiku poet Matsuo Basho visited there in 1691, and we saw his statue with an owl on his head while we were walking further after lunch. He looked humorous. My mother, who started to learn haiku a week ago, put a coin on the statue. In addition to the animals in the picture, there was also a frog. I remembered his haiku “The ancient pond / A frog leaps in / The sound of the water (translated by Donald Keene).”

Near the statue of Matsuo Basho, there was an old road, which led to Akiha Shrine in Haruno-cho in Hamamatsu, 34 km away from there. The shrine was founded in 709 and enshrines the god of fire. In old days, people in the Horaiji area used to visit there along this road to pray for protection from fire because their houses with thatched roof were easy to catch fire and burn. Ahiha Shrine had many visitors not only from eastern Aichi Prefecture including Horaiji but also from western Shizuoka Prefecture, and southern Nagano Prefecture.

As we continued walking along the pathway to Horaiji Temple, I found some interesting things. But I just took a picture of this beautiful tree because it rained sometimes.

Finally, we arrived at the entrance of the premises of Horaiji Temple. To reach the main building, you have to climb as many as 1,425 steps (1 km), and we didn’t do that.

On the other side of the road, there was a monument with “殺生禁断 (sessyo kindan)” carved  on the stone. It means prohibition of hunting and fishing based on the Buddhist teachings, which is in force on the premises of this temple. Though this is a very basic rule in Buddhism, I had never seen a temple that expressively prohibited people from killing animals before. On the contrary, some big temples even allow stalls to sell snacks containing meat or fish on their premises during festivals. So, this monument was very impressive.

On our way back to the parking area, the weather became better. So, I started taking pictures. This is a magnolia tree.

A place with a beautiful scenery. I learned later it was a hotel Unryuso (雲竜荘).

I took this picture after passing by this house. It’s an old inkstone shop.

Blue sky, green mountains, cherry blossoms,

and a beatiful tree again.

Even in the parking area, there were narcissus with vivid colors. Horaiji had so many flowers!