On top of blueberry hill

We are constantly learning about new places to go in Tokyo.  Sometimes the activities epitomize Japanese culture, and other times has more of a global appeal.  Several weeks ago, a mom with Hike it Baby inquired if anyone would be interested in picking organic blueberries.  Our hands immediately shot up with excitement. 

Our family loves to pick blueberries.  Even though we have 12 young blueberry bushes at our house in the US, we would still go to a blueberry farm each summer to pick tons of berries.  The berries we grew at home, we would eat fresh off the bush.  My son loved to keep the bushes clean of any berries he could find.  We never got to take any inside because he would eat them all in the yard.  With the berries from the farm, I would whip up blueberry jam and we'd freeze lots of them to enjoy all winter long.

In Japan, berries are nail-bitingly expensive.  Spending ¥400 ($3.75 USD) or more for a cup of berries means we don't eat copious quantities of them.  Even though picking them ourselves also wouldn't be cheap, it included an activity, which made the expense more palatable. 

We had to be up and out of the house by 7 am in order to make it over to Yokohama by 9 am.  The Yokohama Asahi Blueberry no Mori doesn't open until 10, but to make sure everyone arrived on time for our group reservation, the host asked everyone to arrive by 9:15. 

Japanese u-pick consists of u-pick and u-eat as much as you can within an allotted time.  Typically you do not take any home with you.  It is all about indulgence fresh from the tree, bush, or plant - just like my son preferred back in the US.

We paid ¥4,800 ($45 USD) for the three of us to pick and eat as much as we want for 30 minutes and take home 3 containers of organic blueberries.  As soon as we were released into the field, we went to town.  The berries were huge and plump.  We loved feeling no shame about popping each berry into our mouth. 

When I was little, my dad would take us berry picking.  He would always joke with the farm employee that they should weigh us and not the buckets.  In this case, we didn't have to worry about how much our son was eating.

It was 34°C/93°F, so by the time our 30 minutes were up, we were ready to go.  Our bellies were more full of berries than they have been for two years.  We had berries to take home.  It felt like a successful activity for our family - one that we'd like to repeat again and again.