We decided to have a relaxing day, and took drive north an hour and a half to a middle-of-nowhere cafe that Fumie had read about on someone else's blog. It turns out that it's run by a guy who used to be some kinds of architectural-plastics engineer in Osaka, and left it all behind to follow his passion for, oddly enough, stone kilns. That translated into a cafe with fresh pizza on the menu.

The place is called kamo no shirabe (かものしらべ), which means either “melody of the ducks”, or “sounds of the river”, depending on whether the kamo in the name is the word for “duck” or a reference to the kamo river (“Duck river”) that flows by the place. (There's also a kamo river in Kyoto, so perhaps it's a common name?).

In either case, there was good food in a very pleasant atmosphere.

It's in a place called Takashima City in Shiga Prefecture (an hour and a half north of Kyoto, Japan), but they must be on the far-flung outskirts because there's no City in evidence anywhere around here. There are map links under each photo (all of essentially the same place, of course).

We each got a $15 “pizza set”, a triplet consisting of a personal pizza, a drink, and a small salad. It was most excellent.

After stuffing myself on my pizza and most of Anthony's, I went out for a short stroll with the camera. Here's the restaurant from the rear, from across the little river that flows by.

And the view looking the other way – the one you see from the restaurant – is of terraced rice paddies, mountains, and on a drizzly day like today, mist...

I love the looks of terraces of rice paddies cut into the mountains, such as these and these.

It's then that I met the proprietor, who was happy to show me the wood-burning stone kiln that he made himself, in which our pizzas had been cooked...

I like a cup of hot coffee to settle the tummy after a big meal, so I ordered one, then watched him prepare it. He was chatting with Fumie as he did, which yielded the big smile in this post's lead photo, but eventually it was time to get down to business of fine coffee...

Meanwhile, Anthony played with the heavy stone mill they used to grind the coffee beans...

The guy and his wife do a lot themselves. He made the kilns, and the furniture, for example. (Check out the heavy wooden tables in the 2nd photo, for example.) They grow most of the vegetables they use in their cooking, right next to the restaurant. Here's a shot of the sign out front, with the restaurant in the background on one side, and the garden on the other....