The name means "the world inside the jar": the old Chinese tale of a hermit whose tiny vessel held a paradise. It fits. Koji Iwamoto spent his formative years at Arashiyama Kitcho, the great Kyoto kaiseki house, learning under the legendary Teiichi Yuki; in 1985 he went home to Sanagochi, a river village in the Tokushima mountains, rebuilt his family's old inn, and has spent forty years distilling Kitcho's lessons down to their essence beside the Sonose River.
What you eat
His phrase is "deliciousness that doesn't overreach": broths built on kelp and salt, soy sauce used in drops, cooking critics compare to ink brush painting. The wan — a crab dumpling in that spare, ringing broth — is what regulars cross the country for. In summer he serves ayu sweetfish he catches himself, from rivers whose individual flavors he can tell apart; wild eel he has hooked becomes a closing tea-rice. Autumn is matsutake; winter, mountain venison. Gault & Millau has kept him at three toques for five straight years.
An expedition, not a dinner
A village with no train, no bus and no taxi rank. Even Japanese gourmets treat the visit as an expedition, which is rather the point: you arrive having earned it, into a house of private rooms in the Tokushima hills. The booking is the easy half; the driver and the timing are the real arrangement.
The land around it
Tokushima rewards the trip: the world's largest whirlpools at Naruto (best at the spring tides), the astonishing Otsuka ceramic-art museum, the vine bridges of the Iya Valley, and indigo-dyeing workshops in the home of "Japan blue." In mid-August, the Awa Odori (Japan's greatest dance festival) takes over the city.
Best for
Kaiseki devotees who have eaten the Kyoto canon and want to taste what one of its heirs does with a mountain of his own — and travelers who like their three-toque dinners with a river running past the window.
