Postcards from MIRUKASHI

I’m building a menu of seasonal cocktails to weave into the fabric of the MIRUKASHI salon sessions. I can’t wait to shake and stir and slip one (sprited or zero-proof) across the bar to you. Just about a year ago I decided to stop drinking alcohol on the daily. The transition was far easier than […]

It was an odd year for ume in Mirukashi. A few weeks back I had stood on the narrow balcony outside Kuniko’s house looking out over the ume trees puzzled by the yellowed canopy of my three most prolific trees. Their color stood out, unusual against the more familiar, verdant green of the other trees […]

New wild edibles in my Mirukashi kitchen. May days are soft. Doves coo and whippoorwills whistle. Hazy clouds float through a pale sky. Green deepens and branches stretch as though to reach through windows and enter doors. The cicadas have begun to stir and whirr as bees and black butterflies flit from Seville to thistle […]

Guests of February’s First Spring salon session will have unprecedented access to the inner workings of how one of Japan’s most recognizable foods is grown and processed. 

For the past three years, under the banner of Cultivated Days, I published twice monthly essays about cooking, eating, and living in accordance to the rotation of the seasons in the countryside of Japan. When I had amassed 72 seasonal stories corresponding to each of the micro-seasons in Japan’s ancient agricultural almanac, I knew that the […]