A short trip to Soma, Fukushima

Just a short break from the nostalgic stories in QBS..

Yesterday we went for a short trip to Fukushima ..to buy pears. Oh well, since the pear farm is located in Soma, where the HQ for communication device is located, I was also meeting an ex-coworker who was an expat in Malaysia a few years ago.

Soma is located about 90 km from Furukawa, the place where I live in. We departed at about 8am, along with Sato-san and Kono-san (both were also assigned to Malaysia years ago) in separate cars. The journey was quite long, we went on highway at first, but on small streets around some mountains later.

Finally at about 11 am, we reached the pear farm of Odawara's. The pear was soooo big. Sato-san, as usual bought boxes of pears. I think around 20boxes and each of the boxes has at least 10 pears. Odawara-san peeled one for the kids, and I am sure it was sweet and juicy (we were fasting so we could not eat).

Odawara-san invited inside for some hot tea, as it was a little bit cold outside. Odawara-san was also an expat to Malaysia when he worked with the same company so he can understand Malay a little. I then ordered one box, grade 1 pears 10kg to be sent to Prof Shutto in Fukuoka. The pears was 4000yen, and the packaging and shipping cost another 2000yen. Oh well, Prof Shutto told me once that he likes pears very much, so grade 1 pears should be good enough for a present for him.

The Odawaras were very friendly, we talked about Malaysia, about how he started his pear farm after quitting his job etc.. He told us that it was difficult to raise pears, especially when it comes to the fertilizer things. He learnt pear farming from a veteran farmer, but since he was unsatisfied with the fertilizer because it was 100% chemical, he experimented new fertilizer ingredients. It took him hard work,and to his surprise, he managed to raise much better pears than others. Before leaving the Odawaras gave us a box of pears for free (rezeki, alhamdulillah).

Then we went to somewhere near Soma port, to buy some fresh fish. While the non-Muslims and the kids were having lunch, I bought some fish and seafood products at a market beside the restaurant. The fish was a little bit pricey, but they were really fresh.

Next was the meeting with my ex-coworker, Toita-san. He was the youngest expat in the company, so he was quite popular among the girls (even the operators) back then. Baby-faced and fun to mingle around with, too bad he was too busy for a girlfriend. Perhaps he should slow down a little bit to find one :)

We didn't have much time because he was going to attend a wedding ceremony at 2pm. I met him last year, when I came to Furukawa to visit my husband during the summer holidays, so it was exactly one year since then. It was fun to get to see him and update with the recent news on both Japan and Malaysia sides. He said he is coming to Malaysia end of this year, so if his schedule permits maybe we can meet again later.

At 2, we said goodbye to each other and we departed for Furukawa. We took a different route this time without taking the highways. That was really slow because of traffic jam , we finally reached Furukawa at about 4.50pm ( I dropped by at a vegetable shop run by a local farmer on the way). We were all tired and sleepy (didnt sleep since sahur at 3am) so we just had iftar with some octopus sashimi, home-made onigiri (riceballs), a slice of cake (or half because we shared) , milk and a cup of coffee. Will save the sweet and juicy pears for tomorrow's iftar.

Everyone, especially Papa, otsukaresamadeshita...

* Nice blue autumn skies in the middle of the traffic jam in Sendai