Tsuyu 梅雨

June

Rainy season is here! The kanji for Tsuyu is 梅雨 which literally means "plum rain". It's not that the rain is heavy like dropping plums - in fact, it tends to be light and misty - but this is the season for plums.

June 11th was "kasa no hi" or umbrella day - the official start of rainy season, which should last till early July. I kind of like rainy season, despite the bother of umbrellas and raincoats. The soft rain intensifies all the lush greens. It's humid, but not yet too hot, and the evenings are still pleasantly cool. Japanese summer is something else - hot, unbearably humid and like last year, we'll be subject to voluntary power saving, which means offices and trains will have their aircon set to 28 degrees. More on that later.

My 80 year old neighbour is an excellent gardener, and over the past week, tiny eggplants have dropped, runner beans have shot up as if over night, along with what looks like pumpkins, potatoes and flowers. Small green plums (more like apricots, but they call them plums here) are growing on another neighbour's tree and the supermarket is selling big plastic jars and bags of rock sugar, to make your own "umeshu", plum wine.

My MIL's umeshu. Smells good!

It looks a bit daunting, but I think it'll taste good. You can see she made this on June 7th, 2 years ago.

We have a jar that my mother in law made a few years ago... might be time to try it! Pickled plums, "umeboshi" are also popular. The best come from Wakayama - they're big, soft, juicy and salty/sour, all at once. They're supposed to be a good remedy for heat fatigue and have an alkalinizing effect - which is apparently good. They're also meant to be a guard against food poisoning and a good cure for nausea, so they're a popular hangover cure. I guess if you have too much umeshu, you can pop an umeboshi the next day - a kind of 'hair of the dog' cure.

Here's an umeboshi, with shiso leaves, which help make it a more vivid red, and add to the taste.

Our 'garden', which is more like a strip of grass that taunts me with weeds, is now overgrown with dokudami, with white, four-petal flowers. In fact it's all over the neighbourhood now. It doesn't smell very nice. I looked it up and in English it's called 'heartleaf', 'lizard tail' and sometimes "fish mint"! The Japanese meaning is "poison blocker", and it was used as cure for poisoning in the Edo era and now it's used as a detoxifier and diuretic. You can make a tea from its dried leaves. I imagine it tastes pretty bad. My friend Atsuko told me it's also used as a face lotion - if you don't mind the smell.

The family bikes lost in a jungle of dokudami.

Tsuyu is also the time for hydrangeas - "ajisai", followed in a few weeks by morning glory - "asagao". The colours of ajisai - those lovely soft purples and watery blues - look even better on a softly rainy day, so last weekend, we ventured down to Kamakura, which is famous for its flowers. Actually, my husband pointed out there are many shrines and gardens all over Japan with gorgeous displays of ajisai right now, but Kamakura has marketed itself as "the place" to see them. I went to Kita Kamakura for the first time, to see the "ajisai dera" or hydrangea temple, Meigetsuin,  which is a lazy 15 mins walk from the station.

This hydrangea had unusual purple edging.

There's a tea house offering matcha, ice tea and coffee and sweets

The jizo statues also get offerings of ajisai

The ajisai paths

It was terribly crowded on a Sunday, but very beautiful (and, ironically, bright and sunny). Meigetsuin is famous for its long, sloping paths up to the main temple building, which are lined with ajisai.

The temple also has a room with a round window, which frames the garden beyond. At the moment, the back garden has irises. There's also a small waterfall and a koi pond. The window is one of those classically "Japanese" views, but seeing it without the crowds is almost impossible.

The famous round window from the outside

And from inside. It costs 500 yen to get to this room and 500 yen if you want to walk in the garden beyond, so make a choice: either just look at the garden through the window, or walk in it.

The "back yard" irises

The shrine opens at 9am, so you could possibly get there super-early, or at the end of the season (say, late June, on a weekday), to see it without the crowds.

There are ajisai everywhere you look in Kamakura

You'll also find ajisai designs on summer fabrics.

Pots of ajisai decorate almost every store.

Summery sweets at Toshimaya, the home of "Hato Sabure"

More wagashi at Toshimaya. The lower right one looks like ajisai.

You can find more about Toshimaya and Hato Sabure in my other blog, here: minimeibutsu in Kamakura