Spring is here...

after some days of cold, grey weather, Spring is finally here.

This is a photo of our latest hike at Ukitake (浮岳).

and here are the beautiful plum-blossoms near our appartement...

that mushroom is called "Erdstern" in German (earthstar) and it's everywhere here now. It always grows before morel-season, so it tells me, I have to wait one more week with my morel hunt eventually. 

But we can already pick Fukinoto (フキノト) here... those are the flowers of the japanese butter-burr. They taste bitter, but very pleasant.

They are a little bit more difficult to find here, than in Hakodate, because they need cold climate, but if you drive a little bit into the mountains, you can find a lot of them.

I made them as Tenpura, together with paprika and shiitake :)

Cherry Blossom 14

Like every Winter, I get in the mood to paint some cherry blossom pics. This one I finished today while I visited my painting group in Nishijin.

It's done with acrylics, pen and airbrush on paper.

Size is 35x18 cm

Original available...

Pappare Fukuoka

Before Tsuyoshi had to go on another business trip, we went to Meinohama and had Kushi, but afterwards, we were also lucky to finally have dinner in the Italian Restaurant "Pappare" near Meinohama-station.

Very delicious, excellent dishes and great service.

This is Kinmedai-Carpaccio with olive oil, pesto and ruccola... Wonderful !!! We also had wonderful pizza and pasta, but the kids ate it faster, than I was able to make a photo. But we will definettely visit again.

Oh and here is a beautiful flower in our yard, I spotted on Saturday.

Wishing everybody a wonderful week !!!

Fun at Bayern/Fukuoka

On Friday we went again to "Bayern", the German restaurant and bakery in Nishijin, Fukuoka.

Had wonderful Hefeweizen and Wiener Schnitzel...

Brettjause with Bretzel and brown bread and...

Original Schlenkerla Rauchbier (smoked beer) *yummy*

Oh and I spotted the first lactarius laeticolorus at Odo Koen this week. :D 

This weekend I will mostly spend painting, because Tsuyoshi is at Kuju, but having such a great Friday evening together was already so much fun. 

Hiking at Aburayama

 

This weekend we went for Aburayama, a mountian-hiking-resort with a lot of trails and picknick-areas at the foot of the mountain.

But if you climb upwards, there are only a few people and you can see many exotic flowers, plants and butterflies.

 

After one hour we reached the top. The hiking was quite exhausting, especially because it's already hot Summer here.

 

We took another route down and on this pic you probably get an idea how steep it is.

On our way down we arrived at another park, where we had some great milk-icecream

and could relax a little...

Yuki and Yumi still had a lot energy left and played on the huge playground there.

In the evening, I was so tired, so I just prepared some Tortillias for everybody...

Oh, and one more thing,

do you know a fruit called "Biwa"?

It's very popular in Japan and it's just ripe now... near our appartement you can pick them fresh from the tree and it tastes really wonderful.