Fans of Japanese cooking and craft will delight in Mirukashi Salon. Unveiled in October in the Kyushu countryside, the new space provides a permanent base for Prairie Stuart-Wolff’s series of intimate, culinary-focused trips in Japan’s Saga Prefecture. The multi-day itineraries immerse guests in the seasonal flavors and craft traditions of the region through a dynamic blend of cooking, foraging, and restaurant and atelier visits. The writer and photographer, who has lived in Japan for the past 18 years with her partner, potter Hanako Nakazato, founded Mirukashi Salon in 2023. Stuart-Wolff first began learning about Japanese ingredients, techniques, and culinary traditions around her mother-in-law’s table; the new space, designed in collaboration with Héctor Barrantes Montes and Hana Greer of Fukuoka-based aki architects, gives her an opportunity to dig even deeper into Japan’s rich and varied culinary and craft landscape. Guests might spend their mornings foraging for horsetail or bamboo shoots before gathering around a work island cut from a single slab of Kusunoki camphor (the official tree of the Saga prefecture). Before sharing a multi-course meal, they’ll set the large cherrywood table, handmade by Stuart-Wolff’s mother, with tableware from Nakazato’s Monohanako studio. In addition to teaching guests how to make staples of Japanese cuisine such as dashi, onigiri or musubi, each of 2025’s seven sessions (there will be eight in 2026) includes a newly integrated master class in traditional Japanese crafts such as making washi paper or shimekazari, traditional Japanese New Year decorations fashioned from rice straw and hung to usher in good luck.