Soba and Tsukemono with Shiho

On Saturday, May 6th, we had an appointment with our friend Shiho.  It was Golden Week, so Shiho was off work all week from her regular job(many people have this week off from work.)  Each year, she spends Golden Week working  at a restaurant/ tsukemono store.   The restaurant is very busy every year during Golden Week because vacationers come to the nearby very famous shrine- Hagurosan- to tour. They then go to the nearby Soba Restaurant/ Tsukemono store for lunch.  She invited us to come out there (it is about 1/2 hour from Tsuruoka) and see her while she was working.  It was a great cultural experience. 

As you can see from the screenshot on my phone, we went out at lunch time (it's about a half-hour drive from our apartment) in the rain.  It was a beautiful drive.

Shiho with Elder Hinton.  Her job is to sell soft serve edamame or soy bean ice cream cones.  Many Japanese people love this treat- ice cream with little bits of soy beans in it.  Ken and I aren't fans- but we did try it.

On the property is a tsukemono factory (it is behind the store.)  (One of the less active men we worked with for awhile worked here.)  Tsukemono are pickled vegetables of every kind.  At this restaurant there was a tsukemono bar or buffet where you choose from many different kinds of tsukemono This is my plate.  They all had a different flavor.  All were good.

The other specialty at this restaurant was soba or buckwheat noodles.  We didn't have these very often, but I think they were my favorite kind of Japanese noodles.  They were sort of like whole wheat spaghetti.  Sort of.  I brought a package of the dried noodles home with me.

Soba is served in a broth or soup.  You can choose what flavor broth you would like.  But since we didn't know much about it, choosing was a "shot in the dark."  We chose different kinds, but both were delicious.

The tsukemono bar

Each tsukemono had a descriptive lable with it, but we couldn't read them.  So, like we did so often in Japan, we just chose what looked good.

The business consisted of a restaurant and a big store that sells mostly tsukemono.  They have many samples out for you to try.  We tried a lot of them.

You can see it is a large store with mostly just tsukemono.

We would have purchased some, but we were headed home soon and knew we wouldn't get through a package before we left.

How we love sweet Shiho.  She calls me her American mother.

The drive to our next destination was gorgeous in the rain/ overcast sky.

Stay tuned to see how this lovely day took a bad turn for the worse!