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Anime Including Golden Kamuy with Outdoors Foraging For Mountain Vegetables In Japan

Japan is a mountainous country with most of the population living in the coastal and plains areas. While the mountains are sparsely populated, the Ainu native people of Hokkaido and rural folk in still practice foraging for seasonal mountain vegetables or sansai as a food source.  When I lived in Greece, a common side dish was horta or wild plants that were often boiled, olive oiled, and had a touch of salt and lemon.  Sometimes these plants were pretty bitter and even prickly, so special preparation was needed, and the same can be said of the sansai in Japan.  In Japan there are many different ways to prepare these vegetables to make them tastier by reducing the bitterness or to make them more tender, including making veggie tempura.

Mountain Veggie Tempura  Photo credit:Tristan Ferne Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

There are many anime / manga that have shown or even have a theme of foraging for mountain vegetables.  I was working on an outdoors equipment related post and thought this would be a little bit of an interesting side story.  In recent years, anime/manga such as Golden Kamuy, Non Non Biyori, and Flying Witch have shown foraging for wild plants to eat.  

Only Golden Kamuy shows the native foods of the Ainu people and goes in-depth into traditional hunting, sansai foraging, and cooking.  The young girl Asirpa teaches the grizzled, nearly indestructable war veteran Sugimoto about her traditions and culture as they quest for a lost treasure in wilderness of early 20th century Hokkaido, Japan.  Golden Kamuy is a big adventure with over the top villains that has even raised Japanese interest in Ainu heritage.  It started as a well researched manga that is now a multi-season anime series. The manga/anime shows dishes such as salmon hot pot with butterbur leaves, squirrel hot pot, rabbit hot pot with mushrooms, etc.  There are a lot of stew dishes as that is a efficient way of cooking to get tasty and nutritious food.

The other anime do show some foraging and cooking too, but they are really one shot affairs for an episode or two.  In Non Non Biyori there was an episode where everyone went foraging in the mountains for ferns and things.  In Flying Witch, the main character Makoto Kowata finds wild plants and mandrake in the countryside or by the road even.  Episode 7 of Flying Witch has them collecting and cooking fiddlehead ferns.  I think the anime "The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat" also had a backstory where the protagonist had to survive on his own and eat bugs and plants in the woods (I could be wrong about this though).

On a slight side topic, there are also other farming food/camping anime that are loosely related to this topic.  Laid Back Camp has a lot of outdoors cooking, but not a lot of foraging unless it is in a supermarket.  Another anime is Silver Spoon that covers the a group of teens learning how to farm and raise animals at an agricultural school.

Cooked Fiddleheads.  Photo credit:Joe Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

 Some of the common sansai (it might only be a bud, leaf, stem, or root that is edible) are:

  • Fuki / Fukinoto or Japanese butterbur - chop and pan fry 
  • Gyoja ninniku or alpine leeks - are kind of like garlic chives in flavour
  • Koshiabura - spring shoots have a unique aroma, is nutritious, and is cooked as tempura to reduce bitterness.
  • Kogomi fiddlehead ferns - mainly boil and serve
  • Takenoko or baby bamboo shoots - need to be dug up, common all over asia.
  • Tsukushi or field horsetail - cook and serve as a side dish
  • Udo or Japanese mountain asparagus - peel the crunchy stems and cook.

If you happen to be in Japan and are looking preparing sansai, always make sure you know what parts to eat and how to prepare it properly (do your research).  If you are really interested in foraging I have a video and some links about finding food and preparing it below.  Enjoy this interesting topic that even makes it into anime!  

The first video shows a bit of spring vegetable foraging and food prep from a Youtuber who vlogs about country life in Hokkaido. Quite a nice video.

The informative video below has a pretty outdoorsy guy do some foraging, food preparation and talk about some of the bush crafting knives and hatchets that he uses.

Japan Foraging Links


Some Other Gear Posts

More anime posts.


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My Tokyo Guidebook Now In Print and Ebook

My Tokyo Guidebook Now In Print and Ebook