Chestnuts roasting on an open fire . . .

Well, not quite. The Japanese enjoy their seasonal specialties, and right now, it's kuri season. According to the dictionary, that's chestnuts - big green outer skin, dark brown nuts inside, and right now they are everywhere! The good ones, of course, cost a bit, but there are plenty of places where you can pick them yourself, or you can just go with the somewhat cheaper ones. Mitsuko went out picking them yesterday, coming back with a bag full of ones that her friend insists are about the 500 yen size (say $5 for a half kilo - about a pound). And the news at lunch time had a piece with the commentators out on a kuri farm, learning the right way to stomp on the skin and then use large metal pincers to pick up the nuts - then they showed various ways of fixing them. Roasted, naturally, but also kuri gohan (chopped chestnuts in rice), and the ever popular kuri manju - chopped chestnuts in a white bean lump that is quite sweet to my taste. We also get marron glace (chestnuts in syrup?) and plenty of other variations.

So, it's chestnut time. And the wildflowers are seeding, the dragonflies buzzing, fall is in the air.