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.

Summer evenings stretch long and languorous. As the blue sky fades dusty and pink, songbirds chatter, cicadas whir, frogs chirp, and crickets chant. The air is balmy, On nights like these, summer begs us to sip something sultry. With so many herbs to muddle and flowers to garnish with, summer cocktails are the most delightful medley […]

On a clear April day, Miho Sasaki and I meandered around Mirukashi to see what wild plants we could find to brew into a hyper-local blend of tea. It was a highly anticipated excursion, three years in the waiting. We had started chatting on Instagram in the early months of 2020 and had only just […]

I absolutely love the season of ume shigoto, plum work. It grounds me at a time when I start to feel untethered. You see, I’m a homebody with a serious case of wanderlust. So living in two places suits me. I get to take a long trip, wake up in a completely different environment, speak […]

June is an odd month in Mirukashi. It runs hot then cold, bright then gloomy, and my mood swings with the weather. One day I think summer is here! only to wonder a few rainy days later, will summer ever come? That’s the nature of June in Mirukashi. It’s a joyful month because it’s plum […]

Bountiful sun and rain has sent the flora into overdrive. Grain Full is the name of this season when all things flourish, including the weeds that turn my tidy hillside into a jungle. It’s all I can do to keep everything just under control. But like a diamond in the rough, plump, dense, fruity, and […]

We can feel a shift out of spring and into early summer. In t-shirts and bare feet, with our lunches out on a sunny deck, we utter words not spoken for so many months, it’s hot! The cat takes refuge in the garden, a shady patch of grass cooler than the baking wooden planks.  There […]

Spent ume and red shiso sorbet We sleep with every window thrown open wide in hopes that the cool evening air will fill the house by morning. The nights are quiet but for a few crickets and the occasional owl hooting into a dark sky. But come daybreak the cicadas fire up and scream at […]

A red shiso tonic for summer The windows are thrown wide open. A thick, endless quilt of clouds rolls by. A strong evening breeze blows through chasing away the heavy humidity. Higurashi cicadas call from every direction, singing the soundtrack to another hot summer in Japan. Another hot summer I didn’t expect to spend here. […]

The perfect ume jam A basket of ripe ume perfumes the house with the scent of apricots. Their soft fuzzy skins a shade of sunny yellow flushed pink at the shoulders like fair skin that’s been in the sun too long. Ume, the fruits of the Prunus mume tree, are known in English as Chinese […]