Slurping soba and sharing stories

Our first snowshoe walk ends sumptuously when we shuffle right up to a tiny, thatched soba restaurant in Togakushi, a mountainside village in Nagano.

Soba is the signature buckwheat noodle of Nagano prefecture and soba lovers have for centuries praised little Togakushi for preparing the best soba in Japan. I settle at a low table at family-run Uzuraya Soba, which serves bowls of pliant, hand-crafted soba in every rendition - in a chilled broth, in hot nori-topped stock and in the rarer form of a single huge dumpling.

Soba is best eaten cold, we are told, but not before I have ordered a steaming bowl.

My soba is topped with whipped, slithery mountain yam (nagaimo) and a raw quail egg - a mix of textures to be relished.

We are taught to pick up four or five strands of soba and encouraged to slurp heartily in the style of old Edo.

We are curious about the soba dumpling (soba-gaki) and share a bowl, pulling off a bit with chopsticks to dip in soy powder and miso. The dumpling is soft and creamy, but I like my chewy strands of soba better.

Our lunch, which includes mushroom tempura, is served with another Nagano speciality, nozawana or a pickle of Japanese mustard leaf.

We drink lots of earthy buckwheat tea. When the meal ends, we sip the nutrient-rich water that remains after boiling soba.

The friendly proprietors show how golden buckwheat grains are hand-ground in a small stone mill. I spin the mill too and the grains become flour in moments.

The flour will be mixed with pure water from mountain streams and melted snow. Then in several intricate steps, the dough is mixed, stretched, cut and cooked.

I love the folksy advice from an instruction sheet for making Togakushi soba: "The dough should be as smooth as a baby's behind and slightly harder than a ear-lobe.''

Like our soba lunch, every meal is memorable during our six-day snowshoe trek. Japanese inns compete for travellers by creating exquisite meals.

Our dinner at the Ryokan Sakaya in ski-village Nozawa Onsen is a never-ending banquet. The two dozen dishes in our kaiseki meal includes river trout roe, ginseng tempura and salted bonito innards, all exotic and gorgeous, and served with sweet quince wine.

The Japanese serve "shun", or the freshest produce in season. I begin to understand their sensitivity to seasons - the landscape and Japanese life change so much season by season, with winter rendering the world pure white and isolating people.

We also enjoy a fusion breakfast at Shukubo Gokui inn in Togakushi, where I have chawanmushi with cheese bits and cashew.

In rustic Noyosa no Sato inn in Akiyamago, our dinner is mountain soul food. The comforting meal highlights char sashimi dusted with seaweed powder, pseudo-tuna fashioned from chunky seaweed jelly and tiny potatoes that resemble chocolates.

After dinner, we are invited to an open hearth to drink new sake clotted with half-melted fermented rice grains.

In our wintry inns, dinners are perfect for storytelling and our adventure guide Takuya Ugajin tells us how he makes his own artisanal miso and soya sauce with friends in his remote Nagano farmhouse.

We unwrap the Japanese life with him and our other guide, Mr Jamie Dwyer. Taiko drumming, public- bath etiquette, Kyoto's linguistic coldness, drinking with the boss and other topics intrigue us.

Our lodgings are eclectic. Mori no ie is a sprinkling of alpine chalets in Nabekura, where we use sleds to drag our luggage to our cottages.

In Ryokan Sakaya in Nozawa Onsen, the dancing snowflakes outside my picture window mesmerise me as I sit at a low, heated, skirted table (kotatsu), sip tea, snack on pickles and surf on my Wifi-enabled smartphone.

Ensconced in our inns, walled in by snow, it is just us in the white, white world.

This article was first published on Aug 3, 2014.
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