Water, Wood, and Wild Things
Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town
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کتاب های مرتبط
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- نقد و بررسی
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نقد و بررسی
January 1, 2021
After an initial visit to Japan in her early20s, years later food writer Hannah Kirshner traveled from Brooklyn to apprentice to an acquaintance who runs a sake bar in Yamanaka in northern Japan. To Kirshner, Yamanaka's forests and mountain views evoke memories of her hometown of North Bend, Washington, in the foothills of the Cascades. Her many adventures working at the sake bar, taking tea lessons, luxuriating in hot springs baths, appreciating the subtleties of the Japanese language, learning to dance, assisting with wood turning, and going duck and boar hunting are punctuated with charming sketches and recipes for delicacies such as pickles, bean gelee, sake ice cream, miso-cured eggs, fried chicken, dumplings, game stew, pickled wasabi greens, tempura, rice balls, persimmon leaf sushi, and more. The book concludes with her concerns about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being and livelihoods of the friends she made in Yamanaka. VERDICT Travel readers who appreciate off-the-beaten-path locales and local cuisine will enjoy this dreamy account.--Elizabeth Connor, Daniel Lib., The Citadel, Military Coll. of South Carolina, Charleston
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 1, 2021
Over a four-year period, artist and journalist Kirshner spent many months at a time in the little town of Yamanaka, in the mountains west of Tokyo, apprenticing to and learning from numerous practitioners of traditional Japanese arts and domestic skills. The sensitive, perceptive, and gratifyingly detailed book that resulted allows readers into worlds few people enter, as the author plants rice by hand, studies the traditional tea ceremony, assists a group of older men who catch flying ducks with nets, learns the art of woodturning, and much more. Where other memoirists might have indulged in probing their feelings or reciting research, Kirshner keeps the focus squarely on the people she met and the fascinating processes she learned, as well as on the place where she learned them, with its many plants and animals, including some fearsome wild boars. The volume is amply illustrated with the author's nimble line drawings, and its varied chapters are interspersed with intriguing recipes (some ingredients may be a challenge for most readers to obtain). A vicarious pleasure for those stuck at home, and a loving tribute to the practitioners of traditional arts.
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