Subari National Recreation Area
Subari Dam was completed in 1970, creating Lake Subari, and the Subari National Recreation Area was built to take advantage of the new lake. The recreation area’s facilities include a visitors’ center, camping area, children’s playground, restaurants, tennis courts, and field for “ground golf,” a form of miniature golf played with specialized balls and wooden mallets. The recreation area also provides the last toilets for hikers heading to the summit of Mt. Fujisato-Komagatake (1,158 m).
The park’s many trees—Japanese cedar, cherry, pine, and Seibold’s beeches on the western side of the lake—draw many people to the area. In spring, there are picnics beneath the cherry blossoms; in autumn, brilliant fall colors adorn the surrounding slopes.
The Subari National Recreation Area is also one of the few places to try the local specialty: hogget. Sheep meat is named differently depending on the age of the animal: lamb comes from sheep younger than one year; hogget comes from sheep between one and two years old, and mutton comes from adult sheep (older than two years). Fujisato’s hogget comes from purebred Suffolk sheep that graze on 80 hectares of town land at the foot of the Shirakami Sanchi mountains. The animals’ diet is supplemented with a specialty feed of corn, barley, wheat, and rice that increases the oleic acid in their fat, adding to the meat’s flavor. Only fifteen hogget are slaughtered each year, making their meat a rare delicacy.