This weekend, I went to southern Nagano for the first time since moving here in August. Why did it take me so long? Because Nagano is the fourth largest prefecture in Japan, I live in the far north, and it takes 4-4 1/2 hours to drive down to the far south! It was completely worth it though; it was an absolutely gorgeous day, it was warm, I made new friends, went strawberry picking, and saw sakura flowers blooming! It’ll be another couple of weeks before the sakura are blooming up where I’m at, so this was a nice treat.

The strawberry picking was lots of fun! We were given a small plastic tray — one side was bowl-shaped and had sweetened condensed milk in it, the other was rectangular and was for holding the parts of the strawberries you didn’t eat — and were allowed to walk the isles of the greenhouses, just eating strawberries. It was delicious, and I may have eaten too many…

Can’t wait until my next trip to southern Nagano!