May 31, 2013 - 1 min read

Picking Mountain Vegetables

Sansai treasure hunting in the Yamagata mountains

By Tomoaki Sato

Community writer

Removing the harshness from Warabi by putting it into water

The Fuji tree (Japanese wisteria) in full bloom

As days are getting longer, I went to the mountains in the evening

Late spring is the season for sansai (山菜). Sansai means mountain vegetables in Japanese. These mountain vegetables are loved for their "spring taste" by many people in Japan! I went to pick sansai in the mountains near Mamurogawa Town in Yamagata Prefecture. The local sansai hunters eagerly wait for the end of winter to go to the mountains and search for mountain vegetables. It really is like treasure hunting because it is not easy to find the mountain vegetables. To my great joy I found some warabi but veteran hunters find many types of sansai and they give part of their harvest to family, friends and people in their neighborhood. If you have never eaten sansai, why don't you come to Yamagata and have a try finding some while enjoying the beautiful scenery in the mountains?