Hunting Bamboo Shoots

Posted on May 6, 2007 by Adam R.

We are located in Tonami City in Toyama Prefecture so are countryside and as such have allot of opportunities people in the city don’t. I am told after a phone call we are going to my wife’s Grandmothers home located in Dotsubono, which is about twenty minutes drive away. We are there in no time and get told by her some of the family are at the mountain they own about ten minutes drive away, getting Takenoko. Takenoko are bamboo shoots used in cooking so it sound productive and I feel like making something Chinese for dinner tonight.

Arriving at what they call their farm, it to me is a few rice paddies set in a valley of two steep mountains. My wife’s Uncle is waving us over to his shed and I am given some ill-fitting rubber boots and shovel, he explains we are after bamboo shoots, which grow on the mountainside. I have eaten them out of the can back in Australia but never actually seen what bamboo shoots look like naturally so staggering up the mountain he points the first one out to me.

It seems all the ones I find are too tall, as he only wants tiny ones, which have just popped out of the ground. Now it dawns on me where are the bags to carry all of these we have dug out of the ground as you defiantly need both hands free to make it back down the mountian in one piece. There are fallen bamboo trunks everywhere and the ground is a carpet of slipery dead bamboo leaves. He pulls a tanto out of a bumbag and slices four tubes of bamboo lengthways in half, putting four Takenoko in the bottom piece then placing the other half on top. Tying both ends up with long green bamboo leaves I decide he is smarter than I thought.

With a single cord from his bumbag he ties all four, one-meter lengths of bamboo tubes, containing four Takenoko each together and starts draginfg them down the mountain. I have fallen over five times by the time I reach the bottom and he is barely in sight having a cigarette at the shed. As I reached the shed my wife informs me that bears are a common visitors to this area and many people are attacked in Japan by bears each year to my surprise.

I have experienced digging for Takenoko and think I will buy mine from the local supermarket as a small cream-colored snake passes about six meters from me and slides into the rice paddy. Back at the house the Takenoko is prepared by the women as a side dish for lunch and turns out to be extremely tasty.