When I met Koga-san — a teacher whose sensibility, reverence, and rhythm mirror my own — something opened. With her, tea became not just a study, but a language. A conversation. A devotion. The one I had longed for.

The salon is a home for many homages: my mother’s table, Hanako’s pottery, cherry and camphor woods. And there, in the heart of it all, hangs Yuki’s noren curtain woven from local vines.

Last summer, I stood in a covered alcove of a barn in rural Vermont, holding a block of cherry wood, watching my mother work. Seventy-five years old, her hands weathered and strong — shaped by a lifetime.

We cross cultures not to dilute, but to deepen. We travel not to borrow — but to belong. More fully to ourselves. More gently to each other. More completely to the moment at hand.

In Japanese, dokudami is also called jūyaku — “ten medicines.” Not a literal count, but a poetic truth. For generations, it has been used to cleanse, soothe, and restore — brewed as tea, steeped into baths, or applied to skin.

June arrives soft and swollen with rain. Tsuyu season — plum rains — breaks open with claps of thunder and settles into a steady thrum. The air hangs heavy with the scent of something ancient.

Tuesdays are now my favorite day because each Tuesday, Hana Greer and Héctor Barrantes Montes, the architects who designed the Mirukashi salon building, make a site visit to track progress and take photos.

The priest chanted, requesting permission to build, and we each approached the altar to pray. Then I, Hanako, one of our architects Hana, and the contractor all took turns enacting breaking ground.

After a warm spell that left me wondering where winter was hiding, it blew in on an icy north wind. We brought the first load of wood up to the house and built a fire in the wood stove. I pulled sheepskins out of storage, one at each bedside to caress bare feet on cold […]

October, a golden season of ripe rice and goldenrod, turns to orange and red in November as the colors of autumn thicken. But we are still reveling in the season of shinmai, dining on the new crop of rice. The plump, chewy grains pair so well with other autumnal flavors like Ginko nuts, mukago, and […]