The abundant and notoriously fleeting beauty of smooth, steel-gray barked cherry trees dressed in ruffled pink coats is a quintessential emblem of Japan. It’s hard not to get wrapped up in the zeal of the season.

Japanese parsley is revered for its fresh, herbaceous good taste. It is cultivated for culinary use but it also grows wild. It's the perfect compliment for a rich bot broth of wild boar or duck.

Foraging brings to mind a hunt, or at least a bit of a search, but I’ve come to know these hillsides well so that these days it’s really more like collecting from a vast and wild garden.

The new year had barely dawned and we were already harvesting. Now they are already on their way out and today we ate freshly foraged fukinoto for what is likely the last time.

Kuniko has an intuitive skill with plating, a sense for balance, for shape, for arrangement, all of which starts the moment her knife meets an ingredient on the cutting board.

The language of taste and texture in Japan is far more varied, vivid, and complex than my native language allows for. So many of these words don’t have translations because they describe subtle variations within categories of textures

In the kitchens of ancestral homes, hands fly as fast as they can in the final hours of a waning year for the New Year’s meal known as osechi must be set before the passing year expires.

When you marry into a family, you marry into their food. And there are just some dishes that seem to bring comfort in a way that bespeaks a meaning deeper than the sum of its flavors.

I never really knew a turnip before moving to Japan. But here they are a staple, hearty but not heavy, starchy and sweet, the exact thing for crossing the bridge into winter.

Yuzu satozuke, rinds preserved in sugar, is a poor man’s marmalade. The citrus is juiced, the inner pulp removed, and the peels roughly sliced. A quick blanching fortifies the color and aroma.

At the center of the table sits a collection of covered containers, arranged on a vintage pewter plate I brought over from Maine. This gastronome’s treasure chests contains all sorts of gems inside.

There is perhaps nothing more simple and divine at the Japanese table than a pristine bowl of snow white shinmai, new rice, to close an autumn meal. Like the wafer at mass, newly harvested rice speaks to the Japanese soul of the divine.

October ingredients lend themselves well to shiraae, a dressing made of tofu mixed with sesame paste and white miso. It’s one of the first traditional dishes I learned to make.

The year of Kuniko’s stroke runs straight through the middle of a five year diary still tucked away in a drawer. The September pages document nothing more than her daily harvest, twelve small chestnuts on the 8th, six on the 9th.

I remain inspired by the clear influence flowing between the the meal at home and the meal in the tea ceremony. Cha-kaiseki draws on kateiryori as the basis of the arrangement and flavors of dishes but affords them the next level of consideration.

The choice of cut has a pronounced effect on the texture of the final bite. There isn’t one correct way but rather it’s the cook’s work to understand the differences, make a decision, and proceed accordingly.

I’m inclined towards a devotion to beauty and it’s encouraged in Japan. Here I find not only its eloquent expression but meaning and value in beauty beyond simple pleasure. I’m granted permission to consider it essential.

It is not my heritage to claim, and not the place of an expatriate to swoop in and make grand declarations. But at the same time I have found in it such beauty, such inspiration, such solace