HOSHINOYA Fuji, Japan's first glamping resort, will host a "Hunting and Food Education" Experience Tour every Friday from October 1 to December 17, 2021. This valuable educational experience for adults is offered by the glamping resort.

The "Hunting and Food Education" Experience Tour, limited to one group per day, returns to HOSHINOYA Fuji this year. Its background lies in the increasingly severe damage to agriculture and forestry caused by the overpopulation of deer and wild boar nationwide.

Since its opening in 2015, HOSHINOYA Fuji has collaborated with local hunters to develop menu items utilizing game meats such as venison and wild boar, aiming to contribute to capture and consumption. In this process, they have also learned about the profound weight of taking a life and the techniques of hunting and butchery required to transform it into delicious ingredients.

Wishing to share this experience with guests, the "Hunting and Food Education" Experience Tour was realized with the cooperation of local hunters. The hunt takes place around Lake Motosu, about a 30-minute drive from HOSHINOYA Fuji. This area, adjacent to the Aokigahara forest, offers abundant food for deer and wild boar, and its gentle terrain yields deer with tender meat.

The guide is Masahiro Takiguchi, a leading Japanese hunter with over 40 years of local hunting experience and comprehensive skills from hunting to preparation.

The flavor of game meat depends on the method of the kill, bleeding, temperature control, butchery techniques, and the speed of these processes; neglecting any step can result in a gamey odor. However, Mr. Takiguchi, with his intimate knowledge of deer and boar behavior, performs all these procedures swiftly and consistently by hand, elevating them all to a high standard to ensure the distribution of high-quality venison and wild boar. As a special benefit, deer caught during the tour will be sent to participants later.

After an orientation, participants head into the forest for the morning to observe deer trapping. Walking through the mountains, they check the traps set the previous day one by one with the hunter. If a deer is caught, the hunter will dispatch it on the spot and perform bleeding and the initial butchery. Following a lunch of familiar dishes such as wild boar soup and venison steak, participants observe the butchery of the caught deer and experience parts of the process under the hunter's instruction.

After a long hunt in the mountains, returning to HOSHINOYA Fuji offers a blissful time to savor "Autumn Game Meat" for dinner. A course including warm soup to warm the body is prepared, and under the guidance of the Glamping Master, guests complete the cooking themselves, experiencing firsthand the entire process from taking an animal's life to consuming it deliciously as food.