The Old Man and the Seaweed

Last week, I went on two hikes with the same group. The first hike was to teach us (us, being limited to those fluent in Japanese) what seaside plants are edible. The second hike was just a flower identification hike. Again, for me, they were just a couple of chances to stroll about and have a picnic with a group of elderly strangers. The group leader was the same for both hikes. To be fair, I'll admit that Noriko went with me on the first one. She was going to take notes so we could investigate the plants at our convenience. Below, are some shots from those two days.

From the second hike. There were pools of water, everywhere. The rocky area here is underwater during high tide.

That white building is somebody's seaside house. We walked by it later. They have a really nice view from their back porch.

Seaside View of Tokyo Bay

Navigating the rock path.

Our plant sensei is some kind of professor. He apparently knows a lot. He's also pretty funny. I guess. He usually had some extra info to impart and when he was done, everyone would laugh. Except for me. Sometimes I laughed, but it was usually at something else.

Here's another view across Tokyo Bay. Those mountains across the way are in Chiba.

Plant: Some kind of pine tree? I heard the word 'matsu.' I know a guy named Matsushima and the first part of his name means pine tree.

A man drying out wakame seaweed. All along this part were little piles of seaweed.

I had this bright idea to take a picture of all the edible plants and create a photo log.

As our walk sped up and the pictures proved too difficult to take with my camera...

...also, I was preoccupied with trying to take pictures of butterflies.

This man spoke English, rather well, considering he was 70ish and hadn't studied English since high school. He kind of wandered around and did his own thing (like me). Maybe he wasn't even Japanese! For the second walk, I was adopted by him. I like the beach towel, hanging up: Looking for the lost rhythm (or something).


Here's our sensei explaining something. I actually understood this time. On our previous hike, we harvested the root of this plant (hama daikon). It's called that, because you can prepare the root, similar to how you'd prepare an actual daikon (big white Japanese radish). After our edible plant hike, we went back to an Uraga City building and prepared some of our wild edibles for lunch.