MONKEY SOUP

Yesterday, under a fall morning sky that started out like God's big turquoise ring, Echo and Kaya and I drove around and up and through the string of tunnels, past the wild boar restaurant that's right over the mountaintop, then followed Route 367 along the valley of the Katsuragawa River (with lots of great shore picnic/swimming/fishing spots), which runs along the other side of Pure Land Mountain's range.

Once a narrow country single oxcart road, used in ancient times to transport fish to Kyoto from the Japan Sea, Route 367 has in the past decade been widened slightly to accommodate two lanes, opening the area's natural beauty to ecologically oriented entrepreneurs such as Soma-no-michi, an antique/recycling/craft/grocery store just over the mountain from us, that has for example a great natural honey selection as well as an array of shakuhachi, bean bags, ceramics, baskets, clothing and once you start looking... We stopped there to get some eggs and to chat about firewood while Kaya made monkey soup in the big stone grinder filled with leftover rain that stood outside; she added leaves and stones and flowers and straw and stirred and stirred until we were ready to leave and the soup was done, she left it for the monkeys.

We were on our way to Haruya, in the village of Machi-icho. Haruya, a thatched roof b&b, is also a vegetarian restaurant (used to be in Kyoto) that by previous arrangement serves delicious organic/wildcrafted Japanese and Indian food, cooked on a woodburning stove.

The proprietors Haru and Yumie, very hospitable folks who both speak good English and have lots of interesting visitors, send out notices to people on their mailing list announcing when they will be serving; you can then sign up (make reservations or join their list via this email: hal-yumi(at)mbox.kyoto-inet.or.jp). It is a big experience to have a country gourmet lunch beneath the cedar-clad mountains beside the Katsuragawa, with many things to do and explore in the region before and afterward. The small but great town of Kutsukimura is just up the road (we went to the big spa there afterward), among the many other things.

On the way back we stopped at a roadside matsutake (pine mushroom) "store" near the riverside campsite and got a basketful of matsutake, fresh-picked in the forest that morning, for a bargain price since it was nearing the end of the day. Then back home as God's big ring changed to onyx.