Furoshiki & Fukusa

Furoshiki are traditional Japanese wrapping cloth. They can be used as a garment bag, for gift wrapping, or just to carry items. As they can be folded into a thin and tiny size, they are handy to keep in your bag to use for many different purposes.

Fukusa is anothe square fabric item used for the tea ceremony. We use them for the ritual cleaning of the tea scoop and the tea caddy before start making the tea and serving to the guests. Otherwise smaller size fukusa are used by the guests to protect the beautiful tea cups when they examine. Fukusa are also handy to wrap letter envelopes or tickets. In Japan, fukusa is also used to present the formal monetary gifts in the enveropes when attending wedding ceremonies or funerals.

As the Japanese traditional items are in fashion again, these Japanese fabric items are frequently requested as the favorable Japanese gift items.

Hospitality Japan.com Boutique presents beautiful furoshiki and fukusa items. They are not only handy for wrapping items, but also as a beautiful tabletop fabric to decorate your table in the Japanese style.

From Cecilia

Hospitality Japan.com "Japan"ese Boutique


Hospitality Japan.com

Great Shinshu Soba - Zenkei-an

There are many things we enjoy visiting the Yatsugatake area and one of the many are great food and sake. Because of the pure spring water, there are many great sake brewmaster, bakery, and soba noodle shops etc. in Nagano.

Zenkei-an is a small local soba noodle restaurant run by a local couple in Shinano-Kawakami, Nagano where our mountain house is located. Husband grows soba grains in his field and wife organizes hand-kneaded soba noodle shop. Even it is located in a quite isolated location, reputation spread from the repeated visitors and by the nearby resort villa residents, and it became a popular soba restaurant. During the Golden Week, they had 150 visitors a day!

Menu is simple with just soba noodle and sake. But you will be served some great free daily appetizer and soba is 100% hand-kneaded 10-wari soba.

Phone: 0267-97-2660

From Cecilia

Hospitality Japan.com "Japan"ese Boutique


Hospitality Japan.com

Great Italian Restaurant in Kiyosato, Morimoto

We found a great Italian restaurant in Kiyosato! Very close to Kiyosato Station, and they are open for lunch (11:30-15:30) and dinner (18:00-24:00). Good food and great selection of wine and shochu.
We shared lunch set (salad, choice of today's pasta or pizza and coffee or tea) and grilled lamb. Even base is Italian, chef Morimoto adds some

Japanese touch to the taste with seasoning or with local vegetables. For example the pasta we selected was fresh ham and local natural bracken.

When you are in Kiyosato, don't miss this restaurant, Morimoto. It is closed on Thursdays but no holiday during the summer time. Phone: 0551-48-2118.

From Cecilia
Hospitality Japan.com "Japan"ese Boutique


Hospitality Japan.com

Weekend in Yatsugatake Resort

Since we were busy with the opening of Boutique Motai, we went to the mountain house this week-end for the first time in 2006. I have been visiting Yatsugatake resort area often for more than 20 years. As I love this area so much, we are featuring Yatsugatake area as the special recommendation in our website (Japanese local hospitality section).

We thought we missed cherry blossoms this year but they were in full bloom now. Lucky us, usually we can view cherry blossoms three times every year. First in Tokyo, second in Kiyosato area, third in our mountain house area!! Even we missed the Kiyosato cherry blossoms this year, we could enjoy cherry blossoms when we walked in the morning.

We left on Friday night after the shop closed at 8:00p.m. and arrived in our mountain house before 11:00p.m. As we take Shuto Expressway from Gaien continuing to Chuo Expressway, it takes only 2 hours door to door if the traffic is empty. As we usually travel late at night or early in the morning, traffic is usually very smooth.

Whenever the weather is fine, we walk in the morning for about 1.5 hours. We can really feel the change of four seasons. We could not only view cherry blossoms but "mizu-basho" in May.

We had a relaxing morning and light breakfast as we were planning to have an Italian lunch.

Even it was a day trip this time, we enjoyed the visit to our mountain house very much! We all had a good siesta and came back on Saturday night when the traffic is very smooth. The only thing we missed from our usual routine is that we did not go to the hot spring bath (which is the end of the full course) as we had some business to do in Tokyo.

Cecilia

Hospitality Japan.com "Japan"ese Boutique


Hospitality Japan.com