Windows and doors are opened for a deep year-end cleaning, the rooms and halls as chilly as the late December day. The Irori room smells fresh with the scent of new tatami, green and grassy, a pristine start for the New Year. Outside, the garden pathways are carpeted in amber pine needles. A Camellia reaches bud-laden branches toward the window offering a few wide-eyed blossoms; their petals flush crimson like cold cheeks in winter.
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“Daiko-daki” is a winter tradition in Kyoto. Come December, you will find temples throughout Kyoto serving piping hot daikon radishes, a food long touted for its health benefits. Let’s breeze through the cold winter by eating hot daikon! At Kyoto Wakuden we await you with such hot dishes as simmered round daikon served with other Kyoto vegetables, and steamed tilefish with grated Japanese turnip.
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Kyoto truly comes to life in November. Nature paints a vibrant canvas, with beautiful autumn trees bursting into color and falling into a carpet of crimson that covers the whole city. This month’s Kyoto Wakuden course features ebi-imo (literally, shrimp potato), a variety of taro, from Nishiitamochi in Tondabayashi. We also offer a crab course and the season’s last taste of matsutake mushrooms. We look forward to welcoming you.
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Toshihiro Tanaka grips a large wooden frame strung like a marionette to flexible rods of bamboo overhead. He takes a deep breath before dipping it into the reservoir below. There is musicality to his movements as he guides a solution of fibers made from the bark of kozo, the paper mulberry tree, suspended in water across a screen inside the frame.
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A new season for soba is upon us. At Itsutsu, we use buckwheat grown in Japan’s mountains—from Hokkaido in the north down to Akita, Iwate, Nagano, Fukui, Kyoto, Shiga, Nagasaki, and Miyazaki, to as far south as Kagoshima. We await your visit and hope you will enjoy our soba noodles, which carry a deep breath of mountain air.
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The time of year for crab from Tango peninsula is upon us once more. Moist, savory, and beautifully textured—it is delicious beyond words. We forego any special seasoning, and give it just a slight charcoal roast. We invite you to come and enjoy the natural sweetness of this special and rare crab.Read more ＞