Season of harvest, season of hearty appetites From around the middle of September, the humid, sweltering heat of summer abates throughout most of Japan, morning and evening temperatures begin to fall, and the drier, cooler weather of autumn sets in. The following are those that Japanese traditionally associate most closely with fall. Rice is the staple of the Japanese diet. Between September and October, the rice ripens, and soon the freshly harvested grain is available on the market as shinmai . When cooked, new rice is soft and glistening as well as faintly sweet, and people look forward to its appearance on the market each autumn.
Appetites increase when the rice that forms the centerpiece of the meal tastes better.
Mushrooms are another feature of autumnal eating. Filled with nutrients drawn from the forest floor, mushrooms are rich in flavor and aroma. Among them the matsutake mushroom is king. Matsutake gathered in groves of akamatsu or red pine in Japan are considered the finest in flavor and fragrance and command such a high price that most people can only afford to eat them once a year, if at all. One of the regular excursions of the kindergarten, day care center, and elementary school year is the satsuma-imo dig when the children go themselves to unearth sweet potatoes grown in nearby fields.