A Strawberry by any Other Name Would Still Taste as Sweet

Saturday March 8th

Saturday morning, our friends Akemi, Chieko, Yumiko & Nao picked us and our friend Trisha up at Shirasagi at 11am. The plan was to eat some strawberries for lunch.

We traveled for about 45 mins north east of Himeji to another little town (sorry, I didn't catch the name), to a private owned strawberry farm. After each of us paid 1600 yen (900 yen for RJ), we were ushered into the strawberry picking area.

Everyone was given a white paper cup attached to a necklace and given a pair of scissors. We were instructed on how to cut the strawberries, eat them and then place the stems in the cup. When the cup was filled, we were to empty the stems in a certain trash can (the paper cups went into a different trash can wen we were finished). Then we were told we had 1 hour to eat as many strawberries we could.

Sara got started right away. She would tell me which one she wanted, and then I would cut it for her. I taught her this time not to eat the stems (when we went to a U-pick strawberry field in Carlsbad, CA last year, Sara ate the entire strawberry). She paced herself pretty good.

Nice strawberry earring, Akemi.

The nice thing about this strawberry farm was that the plants grew in planters that were lifted about 4 feet off the ground. This was very nice for the old back. And the strawberries were not laying in the dirt.

Sara, Oishi desu ka? Oishi!! Sara was enjoying every minute of this adventure.

This shows just how big the strawberries were. There were 2 different kinds of strawberries growing at this farm. You might notice the ones on the outside are long and skinny and the one in the middle is fatter. Mitch and I liked the long skinny ones, but the others said they thought the fatter ones were sweeter.

RJ thought it was great that he got to cut his own strawberries and eat as many as he wanted. I did remind him how if felt f he ate too many of them. He said he would try to be good.

This is Sara taking a break and trying to decide if she wanted any more strawberries to eat.


I wanted this picture taken to show the "circle of life" a strawberry goes through. It starts as a flower, then the white leaves fall off and the center becomes the strawberry. It starts green and as it ripens, it turns red.


This is the whole group. We had a great time!!