This day comes to Mirukashi once a March and marks our turn into spring. Young men with torches kindle the tall grasses that line the roads and fields. Smoke billows and black papery husks rain down

The first winter nori harvest offers us nama nori, fresh raw nori, a fleeting, seasonal flavor that was once a delicacy enjoyed only by the aqua farmers tending their nori nets. It is seaweed sashimi.

Last year I became fond of fukimiso glazed namafu, a supremenly elegant version of a very humble dish, dengaku. Namafu, a Kyoto delicacy made that serves as a textured canvas on which to paint bitter-sweet fukimso.

While much of nature’s bounty is fleeting, the daidai trees are somewhat forgiving. The name itself means across generations and if left unpicked its fruit does not fall easily.

Chazuke is green tea poured over rice. It’s the ultimate Japanese comfort food, a sort of articulated porridge that warms the soul and fills the belly. In this gourmet version we add a heap of koumiboshi nori.

Driving the country roads, it seems the hills are dressed for the holidays, the dull winter landscape bedecked with persimmon-jeweled trees. I can’t help but see them as festive and ornamental.

From time to time, we’ll let a log burn down and roast round taro roots in the coals. They are smooth and creamy, and with drizzle of good olive oil and a drop of soy or a pinch of salt, they sit rich in the belly, warm and comforting.

Like all animals this time of year, I notice a growing craving for richer foods, an instinctual drive to plump up for winter. The body craves a bit more oil, a bit more fat, and all things hot.

Many a flowering bush is threaded with the flossy vines of jinenjo, a jungly mass of their leaves matting the crown.Their papery seeds flutter like medallions in the cold breeze and a few remaining mukago dangle ready to fall.

In Japan, food is imbued with symbolism that speaks to a way of being, a way of thinking. A respect for nature defines Japan’s spirituality and its cuisine and the two are inextricably linked.

Making onigiri is an intimate act and homemade ones, laced with love, taste the best. Watching the practiced movement of Kuniko’s hands I was reminded of a day some years prior.

I too would be more tempted by a sultry fig, its thin blackish purple skin stretched taught over a teardrop sac of flowers forever concealed. How do you know when a fig is ripe?

Even I get a thrill when the pink tipped straw colored smooth skinned rhizomes of shinshouga, new ginger, line the shelves at the markets in early summer. They’re just beautiful enough to make your heart race a bit

I wish I could stand on the spine of summer and pin it in place. But summer no longer holds its shape. A great shift is underway, arrhythmia in the earth’s heartbeat.

What is the musicality of a meal in Japan? a young man once asked me. I had just given a slide talk on kateirtori home cooking and he, a musician, was curious.