Visiting the Yamao san’s for lunch. The grandchildren had to come up with a summer project for school and they decided to create nagashi somen. Nagashi somen is noodles flowing down a bamboo gutter. The family harvested the bamboo that morning creating the gutters and all the tableware themselves. Yamao san showed us how he created bamboo chopsticks. We felt a little stupid thinking how we had bought chopsticks in the past… Bamboo is readily available here and it is such a versatile material. We came to Kamiyama hoping to be resourceful, to make things we needed rather than buying them. Unfortunately, time has slipped away from us and we fell into the old rut again. Of course, we still have time and visiting the Yamao san’s reminded us of our goal. We have re-adjusted ourselves now.

(N.B. The somen was delicious too)