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REACHES OF THE HEART

We went today for dinner all the way to Ibaraki and up into the mountains and around and up and in to Madamamura, down from the road in a bamboo grove, the round restaurant frame fashioned of beams rescued from forsaken 300-year-old farmhouses in Shiga, the roof made using 6000 bundles of reeds from the famous reed-growing marshes of Lake Biwa. Here the poet/translator owner serves fine natural food in a fine place away from the hustle of the big city, away from systematized time, from canyons of artifice, to rescue the senses from zombie mode and restore the reaches of the heart...and even on a rainy winter day, it works!!