On June 29th, I decided to finally go cherry picking in Niki this year. Last year for some reason I never got out to go any sort of fruit picking in Hokkaido, and this year I’m putting my foot down and hauling myself out of the house. Niki is prime cherry town (their mascot is a cherry boy!), and since cherry season just started, it was the perfect time to go.
I arrived in Niki around 9am, mostly because that was my usual bus, and I figured eating a bunch of cherries would work out nicely as a sort of breakfast. Niki has a ton of farms that offer cherry picking, and I settled on Imai Farm with a rate of 1300 yen including all you can eat cherries, no time limit, and a free take-home souvenir cup. There was another tourist farm I found for a higher price and no souvenir, and a couple other farms for 1000 yen for no souvenir, but I figured Imai’s was the sweet spot, and the 300 yen is well worth the souvenir cup. The amount included is likely a good couple hundre yen more when sold on its own.
I understand farms like these probably don’t update their website as much, and Imai Farm in particular uses Facebook to give regular updates. That said, the website gives at least 7 varieties of cherries to pick, but when I got there, the lady said that at the moment, only the Sato Nishiki and Suimon varities were available to pick (granted, they just opened their farm for cherry season picking a couple days prior). I did find a couple Nanyou trees and a Taisho Nishiki tree towards the end of my stay, and sampled a few from those.
Needless to say, the Sato Nishiki were the best, and I can now tell there’s a reason that they’re the most sought after variety. They were the juiciest, plump, and pretty large, and overall, super sweet if you picked the right one. I tried to give some Suimon cherries a try every now and then, and they were a bit more pointy on the bottom, but either I can’t pick those right, or the just overall have a more tartness and tang to them. The Taisho Nishiki was crisp, but not that sweet (maybe they indeed weren’t ready yet), and the Nanyou didn’t have much of a flavor to it and also was tart (but also may not be in season yet). Overall, after wandering around the orchard and eating my heart out, I stayed about an hour.
I will note that cherries are a summer season fruit, but the day I went was on the hotter side and particularly sunny. Therefore, many of the cherries were glistening in the sunlight, but as a result of sunbathing, were warm when I ate them. I prefer my fruit cold, I also wasn’t sure what to do with the pits or stems once I picked them off the tree, but I saw a lady just spit out the seed, so I did the same.
I walked over to Niki Fruits Factory, the bakery that you have to go to when in Niki! The spread all looked good and appetizing…but I settled on a green tea roll cake and a strawberry roll cake, each 380 yen.
The green tea roll cake was really good! Although I saved it for the next day, the cake was still soft and fluffy, and the whipped cream was also airy with a light green tea flavor. There were some red beans spread throughout, and this giant chunk of wihite bean paste in the center. The strawberry roll was also fluffy, like a strawberry shortcake in roll form, with whipped cream and a few strawberry pieces inside.
After buying my cakes, I bussed over to the nearby Mushroom Kingdom to potentially grab some lunch, and more importantly, get the cherry ice cream I spotted the last time I came. I arrive around 11:20, and since I haven’t had anything much savory yet, I figured I’d get something from the food court for lunch. On a hot day, cold noodles for lunch! I opted for soba over udon, and got the set with mushroom tempura, since I was at Mushroom Kingdom!
The noodles were a bit stiff as opposed to soft, but that made them chewy, and the buckwheat flavor went really well with the refreshing dipping broth it came with. I got some special dashi to dip my tempura in, which was crispy, and came with a variety of mushrooms. I generally like shiitakes the best, but the stringy mushrooms that were fried worked so well as tempura with so much real estate for batter to cling onto.
Right before I left Mushroom Kingdom, I had to get that cherry ice cream. It had a nice, light fruity flavor. Not exactly cherry like the cherries I had that morning, but it definitely was not that sickening American artificial cherry you get in all the candies. There was this interesting residual texture after the ice cream melts in your mouth, but overall, a great sweet treat for a hot sunny day.
With nothing else to do and satisfied with my day, I headed home around 1!
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