I skipped out on fire department bugle duty yesterday and used the morning to pick cherries with Tomoe and Mona at a nearby cherry farmer. It was part of a special promotion for orchard owners in the area. For 2,000 yen ($20) We were allowed to pick all the cherries we can eat for 30 minutes. It sounds a bit expensive, but cherries are expensive here, and we figure we picked and ate about 10,000 yen worth, plus there is the fun of letting Mona pick.

If not careful, of course, after about five minutes you are full. I tried to go slow, but as good as they were, I was pretty sick of them after fifteen minutes. Tomoe was too, but Mona came up with the great idea to stuff some into her pockets (against the rules). Luckily she didn't get caught.

It was fun and we have both had our fill of cherries for a year, so no more looking longingly at the 1,000 yen little basket of cherries at the farm stand. We took a little "hike" around the orchard area afterwards because the cherry-farts would have made it impossible to get back into the confined quarters of the van.

Even more fun, however, and cheeper, is picking wild mulberries. Yesterday we visited one of our fields and were happy to find a few strawberries for Mona to pick, but even more happy to find the tiny mulberries on some of the trees that grow like weeds around here.

The unripe berries have a hallucinogenic effect, but the darker ripe ones are fine to eat. Luckily Mona is not a fan of the sour un-ripe ones. (One theory about the reason silk-worms were able to be so easily domesticated is that the the mulberry leaf, which is the only thing they eat, puts them in a drug-induced stooper and prevents them from wandering away.)