Bamboo Shoot Hunting

Every Golden Week (string of closely-placed national holidays that many workplaces extend to fill an entire week), the school sponsors a bamboo shoot hunt at our off-campus sports facility. We've wanted to go since we learned of it our first year here, but the timing hasn't been right the prior two years because we scheduled travel to Tokyo Disney and Hiroshima before the date for the bamboo shoots hunt was announced each time. This time, we pestered Lee's boss (head of the school vegetable committee, no joke) about the date and made sure to keep our schedule open so that we'd be able to take this last chance before being not-here next year.

Spectacularly not-breakfasty snacks

The school doesn't provide any transport to the site of the hunt, so we needed to get a ride with Lee's boss.  This meant we arrived with him quite early to help with setup, which was basically putting out tables, chairs, and snacks. A whole bunch of people showed up to help set up, so everything was finished very quickly, leaving more than an hour before the start of the event to tour the facilities. The sports complex is about 30 minutes away from the school by motor vehicle, and we'd never been there before. It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forest, bamboo, and menacing wildlife.

These signs were distributed liberally around the periphery of the facility

There are also tennis courts and a driving range. A 37-slot driving range, in the middle of nowhere. We were told they have buses going to the facility from the school so students can get there, but it seems like a very large facility considering there's tennis courts on the main campus as well, and seriously, how many KIT students golf? Hopefully, more than I'd assume:

After we all gathered and had the morning greetings (but no exercises, I was kind of expecting to have those), we were given dangerous-looking hoes and sent to try to not die while making our way down a steep, bamboo-covered slope.

Amazingly, Ana did not manage to kill herself on the way down

Once you claimed an area for your group, you tried to find little bitty shoots sticking up through the layer of leaves and things on the ground. This year, there were many fewer shoots than usual because it has been rather cold so far. Rather than tripping over all kinds of shoots, we were told not to expect to find too many because there just aren't a whole lot out there. Lee managed to find the first bamboo shoot of the day, hiding in the groundcover:

We took turns wielding the hoe to try to find the roots and expose the entire shoot:

These things are not easy to dig out! They tend to curve one way or another, and are like icebergs - most of their volume is below the surface, and in this case, getting below the surface required digging through very root-filled soil while standing on a very angular hill indeed. After more work than we'd anticipated, Lee triumphantly removed the shoot:

Yes, it was that epic at the time. Trust us.  (Lee - no it wasn't, but I wasn't missing the opportunity for a picture like that)

Ana found one when bending over to tie her shoe, and managed to break it while digging it out:

Lee topped that by breaking the hoe while getting the bottom half out (Lee - handle snapped suddenly while trying to lever the shoot out). Ana redeemed the broken shoot by finding our third and final shoot, which was then dug out using a handle-less hoe blade:

We got back up the steep hill to enjoy some snacks before taking the shoots home to wash and cook them. Three shoots was a pretty good haul amongst the amateurs; some of the more experienced hunters had a lot, but we were very happy with our three, even the broken one.  As of this writing, we haven't eaten them yet, but the preparation process can be seen from a previous blog entry here.  Overall, I'd say it was a pretty fun little side trip, and we got to cross it off our to-do list after two full years of waiting.