At Home with Venetia in Kyoto

Venetia is a real herbologist with more than 150 useful herbs in her Ohara, Kyoto garden. She gives a public reading in English about the wisdom and efficacy of herbs.

British-born Venetia lives in Ohara, Kyoto. She gathers twigs for her wood-burning stove and makes 3 kinds of herbal tea with olive, lemon myrtle and marjoram to overcome the cold. In her garden, she plants winter-hardy Christmas Roses. Curious about the demon tile in her garden, she visits a Kyoto tile maker who carefully polishes the tile with a metal scraper to create the style's unique glossy finish. She also sees the production of the shoki ornaments that decorate rooftops in Kyoto.

British-born Venetia lives in Ohara, Kyoto. She heads to Nara City, where she sees an old friend. She walks through Kasuga Shrine's sacred forest along a mountain trail that was once a busy trading route. The hiking course leads to a view of Nara Basin from the top of Mt. Wakakusa. At her friend's home, they talk about future plans. The next day she visits Todaiji Temple. She goes to the studio of a young sculptor who uses his skills honed from carving Buddhist works to create his own art pieces.

During her summer trip to Okinawa Prefecture, Venetia visits a coffee farm in the mountains, with increasingly more farmers growing coffee in this area. She tastes a precious cup full of the farmer's passion for 100% locally grown coffee. A friend treats her to dishes flavored with muscovado. She then visits a sugar maker who makes muscovado the old-fashioned way. He quit his job a few years ago to become a sugar maker. The taste of pure muscovado, made only from sugarcane juice, impresses her.

With the severe winter just around the corner, Venetia enjoys the calm and fruitful fall season in Ohara. She arranges flowers from her garden and makes apple compote with her daughter. Another fall delicacy she finds at a morning market is mackerel sushi, with Ohara historically known for this fish. She decides to have her long-broken toy bus fixed so that her grandchildren can play with it. She befriends the couple running a woodworking shop she visited and digs up potatoes in their garden.

In Iwate Prefecture, British-born Venetia visits a workshop for Japanese chests of drawers, or tansu, dating from the Edo era. Their elaborate products impress her. Tono, where horses are integral to local life, reminds her of her horse-riding days back home. There, a couple about her age show her clothes made with a local technique and baskets made with tree barks, reaffirming the value of handcrafted life. She tries cooking a local delicacy hittsumi with hand-picked mushrooms and enjoys dinner with them.