Tomie's Cuisine

Snow in mid-March. Three layers, gloves, and a 6:30 am start in Gifu Prefecture. ❄️
Day 7 of our 19-day Nakasendo walk took us from Ota through the mountains to Hosokute, four post towns, a steep forest climb, bear warning signs, and one of the best breakfasts of the entire trip so far.
This stretch is where the Nakasendo starts to feel truly wild. No trains beyond Mitake. No shops. Just old stone paths winding through cedar forest, the sound of snow melting, and somewhere in the forest, apparently, bears. 🐻
We'd been trying to find a bear bell. Day 7 is where that story finally ends.
Link in bio for the full article, and subscribe for the free GPX track for every day of the route. 🗺️

#中山道

You don't need fancy equipment to bake sourdough at home. 🥖 So I’ve put my go-to recipe as an article on our blog: from feeding the starter, to scoring and baking, and all the signs that tell you when to move to the next step.
We prepared the blog post to be as beginner-friendly as possible, covering hydration tips, the stretch-and-fold technique, how to tell when bulk fermentation is complete, and more. Full guide in bio!

We were curious about the frog signs all morning, then we found out why. 🐸

In Shin Kano, on day 6, located between the Kano and Unuma post towns, there's a small shrine called Hiyoshi Shrine with a sweet local legend.
A mischievous frog that once lived in its pond eventually became a protector of the village, bringing medicinal herbs to the sick and rain during dry spells. The locals have loved it ever since.

These stone statues sit all over Shin-Kano, and they're hard not to smile at.

Want to read about the full day, from a 400-year-old restaurant to a last-minute mountain pass dash? The whole story is on the blog. Link in bio! 🔗

📍 Hiyoshi Shrine, Shin-Kano, Gifu
🚶 Day 6 of our Nakasendo walk: Kano → Ota

#中山道 #岐阜県 #新加納

🥖🍞✨
We've just published our first article in our sourdough-making series, and in true Tomie's Cuisine fashion, we're starting right from the beginning: how to make a sourdough starter from scratch!

With the weather getting warmer, now is a great time to start.
The wild yeast in your starter is most active between 24–28°C, so a naturally warmer kitchen really does make the whole process easier and faster.

In the post, I've shared the full day-by-day recipe I followed (and modified), which flour I recommend, three ways to tell when your starter is ready, and some troubleshooting tips I really wish I'd had from the beginning.

If you've been thinking about giving sourdough a go, hopefully this helps. Link in bio.

🍞🥖
From a bubbling jar of flour and water to this. 🍞 I started my sourdough journey back in June, and honestly? I am never going back to supermarket bread, though I will always make an exception for a good artisan bakery!
There have been failures, a few late nights, and a lot of flour on the kitchen counter, but the results have been so worth it. This is just the beginning — we have a whole sourdough series coming to the blog very soon. Stay tuned! 👀

🌈🌸
Day 5 of our 19-day Nakasendo journey started with a rainbow over Akasaka, and that set the tone for the whole walk. ☔️
The rain stayed with us for most of the day, but so did the history. We stopped at a memorial park for Princess Kazu, who crossed this road in the 1860s and wrote a poem about falling maple leaves as a metaphor for leaving Kyoto behind her. We found the bridge that Utagawa Hiroshige drew in his famous woodblock print series. And we ended the day in Kano, the largest post town in all of Mino, which was also a castle town.

22km. Four post towns. A lot to take in for a rainy Tuesday.
Read the full Day 5 report on the blog, along with the offline tracks which you can download for free, link in bio.

#中山道

🧄
There is a specific, comforting stillness to the French countryside in September. 🌿

Our first visit to Arleux wasn't quite what we planned, since we missed the main Saturday brocante, but the Sunday "Foire à l’Ail Fumé" offered something better. We spent the afternoon wandering through stalls of smoked garlic and shallots, eventually finding our way to see the traditional smoking rooms.🧄🧅🍎

The highlight was a quiet "Vide Maison" near our parking spot, where I found a few vintage Gien plates to bring home. 🏠
It was a reminder that sometimes the best travel moments are the ones you didn't schedule.😎✨