Inden and Grape Farm

Tour to discover the charm  part2

It is continuation from part1.

We’ve visited the Inden store, where they also had a museum on the second floor. We were privileged to be given an exclusive tour of the makings of Inden from the senior managing director himself! He was very passionate when he was teaching us.

Kosyu-Inden is a Japanese craft that is made from lacquered deerskin with more than four hundred years of history. This craft originated close to Mount Fuji in the Yamanashi prefecture. It was originally used to design patterns for certain parts of samurai armors that required very high skill to make. The soft deerskin allowed the craft to have high durability, making it ideal for everyday use. The lacquer also prevented damage to the deerskin and the pattern from the humidity. Nowadays, this craft is used to create exquisite items such as bags, wallets and purses.

The process of making the handicrafts involve, dyeing, cutting, lacquering, drying and sewing. As electronic sewing wasn’t available in the past, the artisans used to cut the lacquered deerskins out to create purses as shown in the pictures. 

The finished result!

Nowadays, the artisans at Inden-ya are able to make all sorts of handbags of assorted sizes due to accumulated experience and the accessibility of technologies such as the industrial sewing machines.

Our last visit was the Hayakawa Orchards of grape that were located near the Zenkoji temple. All of us were able to experience grape picking by cutting of the stems with special scissors. The grapes that we’ve picked we were allowed to eat. Depending on the season, different types of grapes are grown but the ones I was able to eat were so many grapes such as Shine Muscat. There were many more grapes available but some weren’t ready to be eaten. Since we had a large group, we picked many grapes. 

Mr.Hayakawa  of our guide during the grape picking. He guided us towards grapes that were ripe for picking! He was a very friendly person!

The fruits of our labors.

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Houtou Kaikan and Shousenkyou

Tour to discover the charm  part1

I am Shunya Saiki of Yamanashi Gakuin University.

Our trip started in the first floor of Kofu City Hall where we gathered together at convenience store named Lawson. We’ve introduced ourselves to the group and proceeded to head to Houtou Kaikan with the bus provided by Kofu. Participants also received a gift bag where we received water that was bottled from Kofu and miscellaneous flyers that held information about the events that were going to occur in Kofu.

Houtou Kaikan was the place to experience the making and the taste of houtou. This food is made with glutinous dough, where it is flattened into a square, rolled until thin and folded inwards to create noodles to be used for later. It is then cooked in a broth for five minutes and eaten. Houtou was very famous during when Takeda Shingen was in rule as it is both easy to make and is filling despite the amount of glutinous dough that was used during the making of Houtou. It also conveyed a message to his fellow soldiers to “keep up the good work!” 

 We were taken to the workshop where houtou was made. We were asked to place our items in a locker, wash our hands and put an apron on. The workshop smelled of wood and flour where in the midst of that appeared our instructor. We were distributed around the dusty, golden wooden tables where flour, rollers and glutinous blocks were placed. We were asked to attempt to flatten the blocks as much as possible to avoid any cracking during the cooking process. These blocks were no more than ten centimeters but were able to feed three. We flattened the dough until the instructor was satisfied and folded the dough into thirds to cut it. The knife used called udon kiri is not something I have much practice with so it was difficult to cut the dough into noodles.

The other folks and I attempting to make houtou…

The noodles that we’ve made is being cooked along with miso and assorted pumpkins. It was very delicious!

When we were about to leave, Mr. Maruyama of Houtou Kaikan came to greet and thank us for experiencing our food.

We then went to Shosenkyo Gorge, where is one of Japan’s most beautiful parks. There are hiking roads that span about four-kilometer-long that follows the Arakawa River. The most spectacular parts were the river itself and the Sengataki Waterfall. Above the waterfall, there are assorted restaurants, souvenirs and an observation point. Shosenkyo is mostly visited during the autumn season as one can see many palettes of color from the trees.

Picture taken at the tourist spot! 

Further down we go to see the…

…the beautiful Sengataki waterfall!

You can see the Arakawa River flowing downwards along the gorge. It was quite an amazing scene!

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