Seki Seminar at Tokyo Keizai University: My hometown (Ikki Aoshima)

This week, we’re going to talk about my hometown.

My hometown is Yamanashi. We started living here since I was two years old.

Yamanashi is located next to Tokyo. Tokyo is capital city of Japan. In spite of Yamanashi being located next to Tokyo, it is countryside. For example, there’re no high buildings, it is less populated and there are many mountains ranging in sizes.

However, we are proud that Yamanashi has the highest mountain in Japan, i.e. Mt. Fuji. The height of Mt. Fuji is 3,667 meters. Since two decades, Japanese government has been making an effort to register Mt. Fuji as a world heritage but, there is big issue about that. Many mountain climbers dumped a lot of garbage in the mountain and polluted it, so the Japanese government decided to clean Mt. Fuji before registering. Thanks to this movement, now Mt. Fuji is going to be registered as a world heritage! It is matter of pride for us.

Next, I’d like to introduce a local cooking and a famous traditional confectionary of Yamanashi.

Yamanashi’s local cooking is called “Hotou” which is a kind of the noodle.

This noodle is flat and long aside. The soup is made from many vegetables, specially, a lot of pumpkins. So, the taste of this soup is sweet and mellow. I think “Hotou” is the most delicious food in Yamanashi. I want you to taste “Hotou” when you visit Japan.

Similarly, the traditional confectionary is called “Shingenmochi”. It's a rice cake dessert.

The rice cake is made up of soybean flour and black honey. It is sweet and delicious.

The name “Shingen” comes from Yamanashi’s most famous samurai!!

His name is “Takeda Shingen”. His meritorious deeds are so great! He is special person for Yamanashi.

I want you to taste these two foods when you visit Japan!