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Gratuitous Autumn Food Photo, 2008 Edition
If I had to leave Japan knowing about only one new food, it would be takikomi gohan.  Takikomi gohan is rice cooked along with other stuff in water seasoned with soy sauce and other flavorings. It's also called gomoku gohan, five-ingredient rice, presumably because most recipes have five ingredients. This recipe calls for chicken, carrot, shiitake mushrooms, aburaage, and gobou (burdock root). It's one of our favorite fall dinners, alongside some homemade rice-bran pickles.
In a country where sharp, craggy mountains dominate the landscape, farmers plant their fields wherever there's a large enough expanse of flat land. Sometimes, cities grow up around those fields. 
 A mussel colony is exposed at low tide in Miyako.
 An umineko seagull rests on a rock in a protected cove of the shore near Miyako, Iwate.
 A pair of salmon dance on the Miyako manhole cover design.
 We spent a weekend at the coast, and found a large number of sea urchins hanging out in some shallow water at a rocky beach.
Masses of variously colored cosmos flowers are very common around Kitakami in the fall. 
This is definitely not the kind of pepperoncini I ran around town looking for back in May:  As it turns out, this kind of pasta is actually called peperoncino. This batch is from a mix, consisting of a liquid sauce packet (olive oil, garlic oil, soy sauce, and some other stuff) and a separate toppings packet (toasted garlic, parsley, and sliced dried togarashi). It's quite delicious.
Here are some more manhole covers. These ones are from Akita prefecture.  These racks of lanterns feature prominently in Akita City's largest festival, Kanto Matsuri. The manhole cover is in the city's downtown area.  Kamakurando, a tourist destination in Yokote City, has its own manhole cover design. The dog is Kamakurando's mascot, Nobu. Of course, he's an Akita dog.  Omagari is a city famous for fireworks, and the site of Japan's largest fireworks competition.
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