A continuation of the previous week’s show, this week Aiba and Co. continues their quest to gather ingredients for the ekiben. This week’s show starts with the gang heading up the mountains to pick wild vegetables.

山菜 (さんさい, sansai) – edible wild plants
山 means mountain, while 菜 means vegetables. Mountain vegetables. How apt!

菜 (ぜんまい, zenmai) – Japanese royal fern
A wild plant. The young frond is edible!

蕨 (わらび, warabi) – bracken
Another 山菜. Again, only the young fronds are eaten. Once the leaves open it get really tough and becomes unsuitable for eating. As for whether bracken is really safe to eat… that’s still unknown though. A study has found it to be carcinogenic to small animals. I guess it’s fine so long as you don’t eat too much…?

蛙/カエル (kaeru) – frog
This word is usually written using just the kana.

たらの芽 (たらのめ, tara no me) – Shoots of the Japanese angelica tree
Said to be the king of wild vegetables in Japan, it’s a high class ingredient. Picked from the end of the branches, only those with skills and dexterity can harvest them! 芽 means shoots, and since the tree is called たらの木 (木, ki, means tree), the name is pretty self explanatory.

棘 (とげ, toge) – thorn; spine; prickle
Oh, one more thing for all you たらの芽 harvesters. The tree trunk is thorny! Well, you don’t have to climb the tree to harvest… just get those long clippers (clippers on a pole? What are those called?)

香ばしい (こうばしい, koubashi) –
1. fragrant; aromatic; sweet-smelling
2. savory (smelling); savoury

揃う (そろう, sorou) –
1. to become complete; to be all present; to be a full set; to have everything at one’s disposal
2. to be equal; to be uniform
3. to gather; to assemble

After gathering the wild plants, they finally finished gathering all the ingredients for the ekiben!

A totally of six dishes – veggies and fish – were cooked for the ekiben! Finally the ekiben is finished, and the locals who helped provide ingredients for the ekiben were invited to eat the bento on the train (it’s an eki i.e. train station bento after all!)

And that ends this episode of Aiba Manabu, as this vocab list!