One February afternoon, I pulled on rubber boots and followed the writer and photographer Prairie Stuart-Wolff into a weed-choked gully not far from her rural home in northern Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands. "The inoshishi got here first," Prairie said, using the Japanese word for wild boar. She pointed to an area of uprooted soil. Our porcine friends were after grubs, but we were hunting for fukinoto, or butterbur, a bitter leafy perennial and early harbinger of seasonal change. Clambering around a thickety slope, we picked our fill of vibrantly green fukinoto buds; the best would be set aside for tempura, while the others would be blanched and chopped into miso paste to make a relish. "Fukinoto is considered the first taste of spring," Prairie said. "There might still be snow on the ground, and the wind may still be blowing, but the earth is waking up. When I moved here, it was the first thing I ever foraged. I feel in a way that fukinoto is a symbol of my life in Japan."
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Esta historia es de la edición July - August 2023 de Condé Nast Traveler US.
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Sands of Time - Sculpted by millennia, Chad is a place of ancient geology and epic grandeur. Aminatta Forna finds her place in it all
The 15,000-square-mile Ennedi Massif, in north-eastern Chad, is a plateau the size of Switzerland. Between 350 million and 500 million years ago, this part of the globe was an ocean. Then the ocean disappeared, leaving the sandstone floor exposed. The climate shifted from rain-soaked to arid. Sun, wind, and water sculpted the sandstone into a dramatic, desolate, unearthly landscape of gorges and valleys, inselbergs and stacks, towering tassili and natural arches. In the desert the delicate threads of life become apparent in trails of tiny footprints scattered across the sands: here, the tear-shaped tracks of a lizard; there, the dimpled prints of a gerbil.
Antiques Road Show - After buying a second home, in France, the designer Claire Vivier called up fellow designer Kate Berry to go on the ultimate shopping spree
When Los Angeles-based designer Clare Vivier began decorating the 19th-century house she'd bought in her husband's hometown of Saint-Calais, in France's Loire Valley, she had a particular aesthetic in mind. I love color and patterns but wanted something peaceful, so the intention was to create a dialogue between those two things, she says. She wanted the house to have a blend of contemporary pieces, antiques, and textiles from heritage maisons to create a space that, much like her namesake handbag and fashion label, channeled both California fun and French sophistication. She also knew that she wanted her longtime friend Kate Berry, a designer and creative director, to help her make it happen.
The Slow Road - Rather than rush from Tokyo to Kyoto by train, as most visitors to Japan do, Tom Vanderbilt chose to bike - coasting down country roads, spying snow monkeys, and refueling with hearty bowls of soba
Rather than rush from Tokyo to Kyoto by train, as most visitors to Japan do, Tom Vanderbilt chose to bike - coasting down country roads, spying snow monkeys, and refueling with hearty bowls of soba. At the peak of the day's heat, I pulled into the tiny hamlet of Hirase, in Japan's Gifu Prefecture. I'd just climbed a twisting, waterfall-lined road several thousand feet through Hakusan National Park before descending into the shimmering fantasy landscape of Shirakawa-go, an almost Tolkien-esque village (and UNESCO World Heritage Site) comprising centuries-old farmhouses with peaked thatch roofs.
SHAILENE WOODLEY on FIJI
I was in Suva, the capital of Fiji, making a film, and our crew took over half of the Grand Pacific Hotel.
easy does it
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gather round
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