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Cherry in Yamagata

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Yamagata Prefecture is known for producing Japan’s best cherries. When the fruit ripens in June, cherry farmers start work at the dark hour of 4 a.m. to bring in their harvest. They carefully hand-pick the cherries one at a time and ever-so-gently, place them in bamboo baskets called biku so as not to harm a single one. One by one, the harvested cherries are then carefully sorted by size and color, taken that same day to markets and shops, and displayed as Asatori Sakuranbo, or Morning-Harvest Cherries. The cherries are exceptionally popular across Japan as a gift of early summer.

 

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Yamagata wo Iku (“Going to Yamagata”)

The book Yamagata wo Iku (“Going to Yamagata”), Rediscover Yamagata is not your ordinary guide book.
There are no advertisements or marketing blurbs. In a series of articles, nineteen people with an attachment to the area simply present the things they love about the prefecture. They introduce their area of interest in their own personal way, and these interests span a wide range of categories. Instead of focusing on popular stores or well-known products, they introduce such things as out-of-the-way coffee shops, quiet shrines, undiscovered craftsmen, and old hot spring hotels. This book is a collection of anecdotes and personal narratives about an aspect of Yamagata each writer believes deserves to be known.

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This book was created on the occasion of the first Michinoku Art Festival Yamagata Biennale, held in 2014. It was produced as part of the festival preparations with the aim of helping those who would be visiting Yamagata to discover what was special about the prefecture. For readers with a love of art, culture, and design, the article writers hoped to introduce a Yamagata that was deeper and more authentic than the Yamagata found in a typical travel guide. This is a guide book for people interested in discovering Yamagata, written by those who love Yamagata.

text by Mikio Soramame