Hydrangea seasonin an old house in Tamba

One summer day, with rain falling from the morning. I had borrowed a farmhouse about a hundred years old in a mountain village in Tamba, Hyogo. Low clouds hung on the hills, and rain dimpled the flooded rice fields.

Sliding open the shoji, I looked out on the garden and the green of the mountains. Hydrangeas were blooming around the house, their wet blossoms shining blue and pink. I decided to make a Japanese sweet that would make this rainy hydrangea day even more enjoyable.

First, the bean paste. This time I used white bean paste: I poured the powdered white an into a pan, added water, and worked it with a spatula.

The hydrangea color comes from red cabbage. Chopped finely and dropped into hot water, it turns the water a beautiful purple before your eyes. Meanwhile, I soaked a bar of agar in water.

I tore the softened agar into the purple liquid and simmered it until it dissolved. Poured into a measuring cup, it was a deep purple.

Then I squeezed in some lemon. As if by magic, the chemical reaction turned it bright pink. Two colors, purple and pink, to bloom into hydrangeas.

I poured them into trays and put them in the fridge. Once chilled, I would have agar in two colors.

While the agar set, I went out for a walk. Through the dim room with its lattice doors and out from the veranda, where round stones sat on a shelf and the rice fields stretched beyond.

Umbrella up, I came to a temple path lined with hydrangeas. The flowers beaded with raindrops were beautiful: blue lacecaps, purple mopheads, pink blooms. Up a flight of mossy stone steps, the flowers continued on both sides.

Low clouds hung on the hills, and rain fell on the paddies. Far down the road, someone walked by under an umbrella. A walk on a rainy day has its own charm.

I took shelter from the rain at a soba restaurant, an old house with seats along the veranda looking out on a maple in the garden and the wet rice fields. First, a glass of well-chilled non-alcoholic beer.

Then came a plate of thin soba topped with pink grated daikon and wasabi: a "three-color soba," where the daikon changes color when you squeeze sudachi juice over it. The side dishes are part of the pleasure at a soba restaurant too, so I had a rolled omelet and a warm bowl of sliced meat and leek.

Outside the window, beautiful hydrangeas were blooming here as well. By the time I finished, the clouds had broken and sunlight fell on the road between the paddies. A happy afternoon.

Back through the town and along the paths between the paddies. The sky after the rain was bright, and the mountains a deep green.

Back at the farmhouse: I'm home. A red noren hung at the entrance, with a bamboo blind under the eaves. In the hearth room stood a guitar and shelves of records.

The agar had set nicely, so it was time to finish the sweets. I cut the blue and pink slabs into thin bars, then into tiny cubes.

Shaped after the flowers of each season, made from what is in season: Japanese sweets let you feel the four seasons. Many of them are small enough to shape in your hand.

I rolled the white bean paste into balls, set them on a black plate, and pressed the agar cubes on one by one from my palm. The petals gathered into a little hydrangea. There you go.

Cute little sweets in the shape of hydrangeas. I set them in a blue glass dish with a leaf and carried them out to the veranda. The translucent "kingyoku hydrangeas" brightened the afternoon after the rain.

One piece on a toothpick: the texture of agar, the sweetness of white bean paste. At the edge of the veranda, smoke curled slowly from a mosquito coil. I passed the time looking out from the hearth room at the garden and the rice fields. The stream beside the house ran high with the rain.

Dusk comes to the mountain village. The clouds left on the ridges take on a faint color. The hydrangeas in the garden sink into blue, and a red glow burns inside the mosquito-coil tin.

Across the rice fields, the lights of the farmhouse came on.

In the evening I sat at the hearth. However many times I do this, an open hearth never fails to excite me. Over the charcoal hung an iron pot with a wooden lid.

At this farmhouse, dinner can be arranged as an option, and what they prepare is botan nabe, Tamba's specialty. On the table sat a platter of mizuna, carrot, Chinese cabbage, tofu, shimeji mushrooms and leek, with udon and rice cakes beside it. Then came the dish of thinly sliced wild boar, arranged like a peony flower. A wild-boar hot pot, something you find only in rural Japan.

As the meat went into the pot, steam rose. Along the edge of the hearth, skewered sweetfish, shiitake and green peppers were roasting slowly.

A summer hearth is not bad at all. With the electric fan turning, I poured non-alcoholic beer from a can into a glass; beer by the fire tastes especially good.

The host's home cooking was superb too: sweetfish and shiitake roasted at the hearth, and edamame of Tamba black soybeans, a real treat.

When I lifted the wooden lid, the botan nabe was ready. In the miso-colored broth were the meat and vegetables, shiitake, tofu and carrot. The boar was rich without being heavy, a perfect match for the sweet miso seasoning. Sweating on a summer night, I enjoyed a delicious hot pot.

After dinner I picked a record from the shelf and set the needle down. With my favorite music and the sound of insects, I poured a glass of well-chilled non-alcoholic sake. On the table, a thin line of smoke rose from a pig-shaped mosquito-coil holder.

This, perhaps, is what people mean by feeling completely at ease.

I had wanted to make this summer-vacation series a trilogy, but in the summer of 2023 a lingering typhoon overlapped with my plans, so the rest will have to wait until next year. I'm already looking forward to next summer.