Tag: misawa guide

Blueberry Picking |Misawa, Aomori
Japan Life · Japan Life Updates · Our Life in Japan · Travel Guides

Blueberry Picking |Misawa, Aomori

Emilybolander1 Comment

Here are the basics:

• stroller friendly, though I would recommend wearing babies instead • I would not bring pets to this particular farm • awesome for even young kids- no thorns on the fruit plants, so even our 11 month old picked her own berries •

Hours: I will update the hours once I find my photo of the sign, sorry! We usually go around 2-3pm.
Usually berries are the ripest during the last week of July.
Directly from base, only about a 20 min drive.

40.783798, 141.363129

Our second year to visit this farm, and I am finally confident enough that y’all need to visit to release the pin. This may be a commonly visited farm, but we stumbled upon it without a pin, and I LOVE the owners. So kind, always so good to our kids, and their berries are amazing.

Entry fees are 500¥ per person, and both of our kids were free. To take out blueberries, you will pay 120¥/100 grams, which is DIRT CHEAP compared to ANY blueberry prices at local grocery stores. If I remember correctly, children under age 7 eat for free.

In total, we paid exactly 2000¥ for all-you-can-eat blueberries, and an additional gallon sized ziplock full of blueberries. The owners of this farm always encourage us to eat, eat, eat- especially towards the end of the season. They provide buckets to pick with, and even have small baskets for children.

This particular farm has always been extremely quiet, with lots of options as to areas that you can pick from. We have never even felt like we were picking around other people. 

Park directly in front of the greenhouse, when you drive in you will see the family’s house to the left, and the greenhouse to the right. There is a small parking area between the two.
As is often customary in Japan, this is both the family’s home, and their business. Make sure you are respectful, as this is where they live.

Blueberry and mud face

I would recommend wearing/bringing bug spray- the mosquitoes aren’t bad here, but the ants are. Honestly they weren’t pesky enough to pose a problem this year, but I remember they were THICK last year.

If you want to know what life with Henry is like right now, this is it. Constantly shaking a stick or toy at you saying “pew pew pew pew pew!”

This family is extremely gracious, and almost always gives us a “free gift” or knocks down the price a little bit. Last year at the end of the season, when the berries were ripe, ripe, ripe, we took home almost 4lbs of berries for around $9.90.

Edit-00777
Last year: This was the first bag we picked, we went home with around 4x this many berries.

If you’re new to Misawa, make sure you also check out my post on cherry picking. We are planning to hit the apple farms, strawberry farms, and maybe even pick some raspberries this year too.

Enjoy! The berries are delicious!

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Cherry Picking- June 29
Japan Life · Japan Life Updates · Misawa Guides · Our Life in Japan · Travel Guides

Cherry Picking- June 29

EmilybolanderLeave a comment

Oh my goodness was this a short, fun little day trip. All you can eat fresh cherries for 40 minutes on a warm June day. Can you beat that? 

Here are the coordinates directly to the parking lot- it is a very small shop with a couple vending machines on the side. It is right on the corner of several streets. The owners were super friendly, despite our inability to understand how the process worked. Ha.

40.405600, 141.325477

Disclaimer: Like I said, we didn’t realize how this process worked, so we unfortunately did not realize that you are not supposed to bring a container inside the picking area with you. This is an all-you-can-eat-only kind of deal, then you can purchase cherries in boxes afterwards. When they didn’t hand us any baskets, we assumed we were just supposed to bring our own, and grabbed a Daiso basket from the car.

Thankfully Henry didn’t pick MANY cherries, but we still felt so bad bringing a bucket to the front when they didn’t charge us for them.

The Japanese hosts were so kind to us when we brought out a small container of cherries that Henry had picked, but we felt SO bad that we didn’t realize that we were only supposed to eat freely while in there. With our blueberry picking experience last year, you could pay for the weight of whatever you carried out, so we assumed we could do the same here.
Don’t be us. There are flats of cherries that you can buy afterwards- don’t carry any out on your own!Entry fee is 1000 yen per person for 40 minutes. It is somewhat unclear from the signs/what they charged us on exactly how much kiddos cost, but they are CHEAP either way. They were kind enough to allow our babes in for free.
During those 40 minutes, you may eat as many cherries as you would like.The cherries are THICK right now, as of the last week of June. You will leave that area with a stomach ache if you eat the entire time- I promise. And they are SO good. I took photos most of the time, and still ended up feeling full when it was time to leave. 

Let me say it again, the cherries are SO good. Like, can I say it 4 times? I was shocked to even see some dark, rich bing cherries on a few trees. Do y’all realize how much those babies cost at the grocery store in Japan?!
The branches hang LOW, so even a kiddo as little as around 1.5 years old could easily reach the branches.

AND… the best part?

It’s all COVERED by greenhouses! It started absolutely pouring while we were picking, and all of us stayed nice and dry.

If you look closely, you can see the pouring rain in the background. SO nice that the trees in the picking area were covered, so the kids stayed totally dry.

Basically NO bugs. Grass is very short. Seriously the easiest place for a fun day trip with even very young kiddos. Vending machines are also located to the side if you end up going on a hot day. I would highly recommend this for ANY age.The drive from base is about 57 minutes without tolls, but it is a BEAUTIFUL drive. I am not sure if a toll route would change this, but I HIGHLY recommend the route that Google Maps took us while avoiding tolls. 

The Japanese asked us to come back as we left today, only after taking photos of our kids and gifting us a small bag of cherries for free. We will absolutely return. I’m tempted to go back again tomorrow, honestly.Make sure you check them out too, you won’t be disappointed.