SLOW CHOW

Not to change the subject, since there isn't one yet - only the title so far - but I'm getting to it, in my rambly fashion: lately Echo and I have been going once a week to one of our favorite free springs, one we revisited after it had dried up a few years ago and we were recently told it had started running again below Hira mountain.

We go there on Wednesdays, in preference to other days and springs we know because it gives us a chance to eat lunch at Hot Station, our favorite as-yet-uncrowded slow food restaurant around here. Located behind Hira Station on the Kosei railway line and seating maybe 16 real friendly people, Hot Station is run by local obachan (grandmas) that serve set lunches of home-made quality like grandmas used to make (and still do in some lucky households hereabouts). Small seasonal menu of excellent food, and a few items (kimpiragobo, miso, breads, rolls, cooked rice, sweet beans and bento dishes, among other things) always on sale near the vestibule.

What can be better than having a meal prepared by hands that have been preparing the same meals in the same way for 50 years or more, from ingredients grown and made by those same hands, all in the same way those hands were taught by other longlived hands, the line going back hand-in-hand over centuries, reaching back into times when food was still exactly and only food, no thought of fastness, still serving the actual basic purpose food must serve, i.e., to nourish and nurture those who are cared for? Not to kill tongue time or do a Las Vegas number for jaded taste buds, but to show a cherished body and its attendant functions that someotherbody cares about all this, cares about you, puts a pinch of love and joy in the growing and preparing, joy that does something for the flavor, love that grows it right, as those who care know it must be grown; creates it right as something so worthy deserves to be created- the miso, vinegar, tofu, rice, sauces, vegetables - cooks it right, the same care everywhere that you can view in the layout, sense in the flavor and freshness, and live in how good it makes you feel to eat it and be, your cells individually dancing and singing afterward, carrying you along for the fun, that kind of food?

We spoke to one of the busy ladies that run the place, she said it was started a few years ago by a group of 8 now-elderly ladies who sometime back in the 70s had gotten together and formed a company to create and market the miso they and their families had been making for centuries using their own locally grown soybeans. About 5 years ago in the same locally grown spirit, spurred as well by fading traditions of kitchens and foods, they started the restaurant, serving meals made the old way, using local farm products.

So if you're hungry at lunchtime in this lakeside neighborhood, be sure to drop in. Best misoshiru around, and all the other items are the fresh-best too, you could only maybe get better food if you had a couple of grandmas of your own. Barring that, Hot Station is the place to go on Wed. Sat. and Sun. between 1o and 5 (Nov-Feb, 10~4:30). They don't really want to make a full-time job or a full-fledged business out of it, just have a place to prepare and serve their locally grown produce to locally growing folk, like they've always been doing. You can tell they're in it more for love than money.

They also have a steady spring running outside, where you can fill up on your Wednesdays, if you prefer slow water.

HIRA HAKKO

On Saturday we went north a bit to see the Hira Hakko, a local festival we hadn't yet made it to that's been happening every Spring around this time for 1500 years or so, held for the safety of all who live and work on Lake Biwa and its shores. Priests from a distant affiliated downlake temple, a dozen yamabushi, a squad of shakuhachi players and several beautiful young women in kimono come sailing to Omimaiko, along the way throwing paper prayers on the wind and ritually pouring other blessed waters into the Lake. After they land at Omimaiko they walk the long road, stopping to pray at a local statue of Kannon.

From there they and the whole mob of us that had gathered by then, everyone Lake-related and their families and friends, relatives, tourists, mobs of photographers, walked out into the pine groves that cover the central axis of the small and anciently famous peninsula, toward loudening multidrum music pounding like the theme drums from The Seven Samurai.

Along the way the crowd discovered a group of young female art college students all dressed up in fantastic costumes who were quietly and privately (or so they had expected) making some kind of strange art/music video on the beach when suddenly this mob came along and they were at once the center of attention from a growing throng, being asked what they were up to by everyone, who thought they were some new strange and unsettling part of the ancient ceremony - which the poor girls repeatedly and heatedly denied - they were so embarrassed at being seen dressed so strangely out here and doing these odd things, they had utterly not anticipated any vast swarm of observers to descend on them, it put a major cramp in their artistic intentions.

They finally tried to hide under a tarp from the photographers and crowds streaming steadily toward the beach out on the point where, in a big square made sacred by bamboo poles strung with rice straw rope stood a large pile of green cedar boughs that, after extended ceremonial praying and mythodramatizing, the yamabushi set afire; the singing and music went on, wafting across the Lake with the prayers, like the smoke...

There was a generous variety of weather to go along with the intensity of it all, which is as it should be, the weather being a big factor in comprehensive Lake safety: rain was there in bursts, and wind was steady, there was lakespray and sun and scuds of mist, some wannabe snowflakes showed up and anything else that can be called weather was likely around there somewhere.

Folks from way young to max elderly in all states of health huddled around, kids running free and taking part in the drumming, folks in wheelchairs there to get some of the sacred smoke unto themselves to cure their ills. And it seems to work, for since then I've been feeling better in all respects.