Okayama W · TamashimaNo.443★★Open in map →
Okayama White Peach
Okayama's signature summer fruit, grown pale under hand-tied paper bags. On the hills west of Shin-Kurashiki Station a line of farm stands sells it in sight of the orchards, with the farm co-op's shop open all year at the end of the road.
A white peach is white because it never sees the sun. Once the fruit reaches the size of a ping-pong ball, growers tie a paper bag over each one by hand, and the skin stays pale and thin while the flesh softens. Okayama built a whole fruit trade on the technique, and the hill district north-west of Shin-Kurashiki Station is one of the places it is still practised at scale. The lane through those orchards is known locally as the Tamashima Peach Road for the line of farm stands along it. The co-op shop at the western end, Mercato Tamakita Kasaikan, is the one that opens all year rather than only in season.
Why it stays quiet
This is farmland, not a sight, so the reward is a straightforward one: fruit sold a few hundred metres from where it grew, at a counter that also sells the district's grapes and pears. Nothing here is staged for visitors, and outside the summer weeks the stands are quiet enough to talk to whoever is at the till.
Background & history
The white peach was found in Okayama during the Meiji era, when a local grower singled out a pale-skinned seedling from Chinese peach stock, and almost every peach variety grown in Japan today descends from it. The best known of its offspring, Shimizu Hakuto, was picked out in 1932 in what is now northern Okayama City and became the byword for a high-grade white peach. Growing and selling peaches has gone on in the Tamashima district since the Meiji era as well, which is why the farm stands here sit among the orchards rather than in a town.
What to look for — in walking order
- Shin-Kurashiki Station north exit
- the gateway to the district, served by Sanyo Line locals and by Kodama shinkansen
- Tamashima Peach Road
- the local name for the road lined with growers' and wholesalers' farm stands
- The orchard hills
- low slopes where each fruit is wrapped in a paper bag by hand from around June
- Mercato Tamakita Kasaikan
- the farm co-op's direct-sales shop, open all year, with peaches, grapes and pears in turn
How to enjoy it
The Tamashima harvest peaks from the middle of July to the middle of August, and the co-op shop runs a peach festival in late July. Opening is from 8:30 to 16:30 for most of the year, so a late-morning visit gives the fullest shelves. Varieties change week by week through the season, from the early Hanayome to Shimizu Hakuto in midsummer and Kawanakajima Hakuto at the end, so it is worth asking which is ripe today rather than shopping by name.
How to actually get there
- Okayama Station → Shin-Kurashiki Station (JR Sanyo Line local, about 25 minutes, 510 yen).
- Leave by the north exit and walk west along the road toward the orchard hills.
- Follow the run of farm stands, the road locally called the Tamashima Peach Road, to the co-op shop at the end.
- Buy by the box or the single fruit, then walk back to the station the same way.
- JR Sanyo Line from Okayama
- Okayama Station →(JR Sanyo Line local, about 25 minutes, 510 yen)→ Shin-Kurashiki Station, then about 15 minutes on foot west from the north exit. Local trains toward Kurashiki and Shin-Kurashiki run roughly three times an hour through the day, so a timetable check is only needed for the return.
- Return from Shin-Kurashiki Station
- Walk back the same way and take the Sanyo Line east to Okayama. Services thin out after the evening peak, so check the board if you have lingered. Shin-Kurashiki is also a Sanyo Shinkansen stop, which is the faster way back if you are continuing west.
Before you go
- Cash
- The co-op shop takes major credit cards and the common Japanese QR payments as well as cash. The smaller family stands along the road are far more likely to be cash only, so carry some.
- Closing days
- Peaches are a summer crop. Outside roughly July and August the shelves turn over to grapes, then pears and winter vegetables, and the smaller roadside stands may not open at all. The co-op shop closes over the New Year holidays and shuts earlier in the January-to-March period.
- Another way
- By car it is about 10 minutes from the Tamashima interchange on the Sanyo Expressway, and there is a large car park. Arriving by Shinkansen, Kodama services stop at Shin-Kurashiki once or twice an hour.
- After you get off
- From Shin-Kurashiki Station take the north exit and walk west for about 15 minutes on flat streets. The co-op shop sits on the road with the farm stands, with the orchard hills rising behind it.