Ashiyasu is steep and it is high. Ordinary vegetables did not do well there and rice was out of the question, so what was planted instead was soybean, which tolerates cold.

Households used to make their own soy sauce from soaked beans. What was left in the vessel afterward is shoyu no mi, the fruit of the soy sauce. It carried real nutrition and it was, in a place like this, a serious source of protein.

The method takes days. Boil the beans four hours, dry them one. Mix them with finely broken barley koji, and lay the mixture three or four centimeters deep in a wooden box lined with straw.

Cover the box with a towel and then a blanket, and hold the temperature inside it at around twenty degrees. When white mold appears, stir it through. A few days later, when the mold has turned black, dry it and it is done. To eat it, loosen it with water and a little sake and salt it, then top it with spring onion, dried bonito flakes, shirasu, or umeboshi. It is started around October, when the soybean harvest begins, and eaten as a store through the winter. Nobody in the village brews soy sauce any more. They still make what used to be left over from it.