Aizu mushroom hike

Autumn is progressing fast now and unfortunately not in the nice clear-sky Japanese way, but more like bad weather-cloudy-German-style.

Anyways, this is the announcement for the autumn hike Nov. 3-4, and the subject is Mushrooms.

Friday, Nov. 3rd is a national holiday, and we will be leaving from Tsukuba Center at 7.45am.
The plan is to go to the Mushroom Museum north of Mito and then head on to the Kinugawa area, precisely Yunishigawa Onsen. There we will take an easier hike to look for mushrooms and enjoy lunch and Onsen too. The plan is to stay at a cabin at a camp ground near there, have BBQ or pizza (they have stone pizza ovens) in the evening. If we
identify the mushrooms correctly it will be pizza fungi.

Nov. 4th we change location to drive to Nasu-shiobara which should still have very nice autumn leaves. Take a hike, onsen and so on and after all head back to Tsukuba in the evening.

If you are interested in that hike let me know

• your name
• phone number
• interest in mushrooms

It will be a car based hike, so please also tell me if you have a car and how many people fit in.
Approximate cost is:

• 3000yen cabin
• 4000yen transportation
• shared cost for BBQ or pizza in the evening
  (Onsen ~600yen x2, lunch and snacks)

(!The plan is subject to change, since I was not yet able to confirm the booking for the cabin at the camp ground!)

Mushroom hike in Tochigi (Nasushiobara + Yunishikawa Onsen), Nov. 3.-4.

For this years mushroom hike 12 people joined. We left at 8.00 am from Tsukuba Center in two cars heading to the Mushroom Museum (きの子博士館) north of Mito as our first stop. Entrance is free and the museum is a lot of fun. It gave a nice and playful introduction to the most common edible and poisonous mushrooms in Japan, as well as into the mushroom life cycle and mushroom cultivation. Small drawback: the information is all in Japanese. From there we headed towards Nasushiobara and had lunch at the Michi no Eki Nasu Yoichi. There, this years “All Japan bamboo crafts exhibition” was on display as well as a flea market going on, for which we also took a little time to look around.
Arriving in Nasushiobara, we choose now a shorter hike, since not enough time was left to finish the intended hike before night fall. So we looked at the Mikaeri Waterfall and hiked up and down the mountain there. We could spot some mushrooms in the mixed forest with some old Momi no ki (eng.: momi fir tree), however no common edible mushrooms
of this late autumn season here.

Arriving at the camp ground some of us took an Onsen there, while the others started the BBQ fire. We were enjoying the evening eating, playing guitar, baking a birthday cake in secret, to then let Manpreet blow out the candles. … until the camp ground staff came to remind us of the finishing time of BBQ. He asked in Japanese: “Is there anybody among you who can speak Japanese?” First nobody of our group answered, so I told him in Japanese “No, nobody here can speak Japanese!” He took it with humor and was very kind to let us continue to finish our BBQ even though it was way past 9 pm (the set BBQ finishing time).

We slept in two cabins in which we had enough space for 12, however only 10 futons since I did not confirm in detail for the reservation. With enough other blankets we managed that everybody could sleep warm.

In the morning right behind the cabin in the forest we saw a nice bunch of Kuri-take Mushrooms which seemed to present themselves to us as breakfast. They were however already a few days old and so again we did not eat our hunted mushrooms. After breakfast with fruits, bread, coffee, and eggs which we brought, we drove along the Momiji-line with
nice autumn colors towards Yunishigawa Onsen. Stopping on the way to get some very sweet Highland Daikon and other local specialties like Mushroom soup or grasshoppers, we arrived (as usual later than initially planned) to have a 2-3 h hike. Up in the cedar forest not much mushrooms (at least not edible ones) but down on the other side in a mixed beech tree forest we found a few nice Muki-take. We made sure to not confuse this species with the poisonous Tsukiyotake, which can be distinguished by cutting the mushroom and checking the base for a black spot which only the Tsukiyotake has. The hiking trail we took from Yunishikawa Mizu no Sato (水の郷) up to Hi no daira (日の平) was a rather rarely used hiking path, so that it was sometimes not easy to recognize the path.

With a late lunch at a local Soba-restaurant we were already past the time until we could enter some of the nice hotel onsen in Yunishikawa for day visitors, so we just went to the public Onsen of Yunishikawa before starting your dive back to Tsukuba. By local road we arrived around 10 pm.

With no time to prepare and eat the Muki-take we found, I took them home and ate as breakfast the next day. I am not sure if participants are happy and relieved that they did not have to eat the collected mushrooms, or sad because they couldn't?!

Thanks especially to the drivers, and to everybody to make it such a nice autumn trip.

For a good and simple description of the most common edible mushrooms see: http://www.akita-gt.org/eat/kinoko.html#28

Found Mushrooms:
Edible: Muki-take, Kuri-take, Bunahari-take
Poisonous: Nigakuritake
Medical: Kawara-take
… and lots of mushrooms not yet identified, since with all the Onsen, driving, and bbq there was no time to look deep into thick mushroom identification books.