TOKAI
Hamamatsu
Travel journal from Hamamatsu, with 7 notes on the places I ate, the dishes I cooked and the sights: Osawa, the village in the sky, Shohachiman Shrine and the Wishing Bell in the Sky, Rice cooked over a kamado, Satsuki's lunch box.
Journeys: 1 · Notes: 7
Journeys
01
Cook the local flavors once more
Dishes made in borrowed kitchens, and how each one connects to the land.
Hamamatsu, Shizuoka
Rice cooked over a kamado
In this house the tiled kamado is still in daily use.
From: Lighting the kamado in a house in the sky
Hamamatsu, Shizuoka
Satsuki's lunch box
A recreation of the lunch Satsuki gets up early to make in My Neighbor Totoro: rice cooked over a kamado, grilled dried sardines, green peas, pink sakura denbu…
From: Lighting the kamado in a house in the sky
Hamamatsu, Shizuoka
Wild boar hot pot over the hearth
Most of Hamamatsu's Tenryu Ward is forest, and the Tenryu Gibier Fes, a festival of wild game, is held in Futamata (its fifth edition was in May 2025).
From: Lighting the kamado in a house in the sky
Hamamatsu, Shizuoka
Skewered yamame trout
Every summer a yamame-catching festival is held on the Misakubo River (the 28th was in July 2025).
From: Lighting the kamado in a house in the sky
02
A little of each town’s story
Sights, specialties and how the towns came to be: small cultural notes beside each journey.
Hamamatsu, Shizuoka
Osawa, the village in the sky
A village high in the mountains of Misakubo, in Hamamatsu's Tenryu Ward.
From: Lighting the kamado in a house in the sky
Hamamatsu, Shizuoka
Shohachiman Shrine and the Wishing Bell in the Sky
The only shrine in Osawa, with a stone torii and a small hall in a grove of cedars.
From: Lighting the kamado in a house in the sky
Hamamatsu, Shizuoka
Shizuoka green tea
Shizuoka has the largest tea-growing area in Japan: 11,600 hectares in 2025, or 34.7 percent of the national total, and it also leads in the value of crude tea…
From: Lighting the kamado in a house in the sky
