I had only just learned to make umeboshi the year before. Working by Kuniko's side I scribbled notes on a piece of paper, recording amounts, ratios, timing, and sequence.

Eigi-san always gifts a bag full of shin-shoga, his fresh new ginger. Kuniko saves out a few rhizomes to use fresh and opens brining season with the rest.

Washoku strips away inessentials and places the core essence of an ingredient’s own flavor and character at the forefront. So the origin and condition of ingredient is of principle concern.

The sansho tree has fully leafed out, the leaves broad but still tender and fragrant. The abundance of the moment calls for sansho-ae, perhaps better known as kinome-ae, a creamy, tangy, vibrant green dressing.

Each year the spring burn clears away the winter weeds. Protected by soot-blackened spiky stalks all around and undaunted by overgrowth, bracken farms crown neck first, bowing deeply towards the ground.

Sakamoto-san emerged from the sea in a black wetsuit trawling a large harvest of shin-wakame. The brown, lobe-leafed new spring algae spilled from nets belted to his waist.

These specific flavors of a region are attributed to fudo. Written with the characters for wind and soil the concept is akin to terroir.

The short fukinoto season is drawing to a close and I visit my spot to see what remains. Unlike the shy buds we exalted two weeks ago, they now gape open with yellow tinged petals spread wide.

Fukinoto are the early flower of the common butterbur weed. They are the first of a string of sansai, wild vegetables that we forage throughout spring in the hills of Japan.

If Kuniko, my mother-in-law, were to write the story of her life it might read more as a menu than a memoir.