Kameoka, Kyoto

Fog collects in the Kameoka basin before dawn, thick and unhurried, pooling between the mountains of the Tamba highlands as though the ancient lake that once filled this depression never entirely left. By mid-morning it burns off, and the town reasserts itself — train platforms, a roadside station selling bundles of mizuna and bags of Tamba black beans, the ordinary commerce of a place that feeds Kyoto without particularly advertising the fact.

The Hozu River cuts through the gorge to the east, and the Torokko Kameoka station marks the point where the canyon begins. Passengers board the sightseeing train here, but the river itself has been moving goods and people since the merchant Suminokura Ryoi opened the route centuries ago. Izumo Daijingū, a shrine of considerable age at the foot of Mount Mikage, draws its own quiet traffic — worshippers, not tourists, for the most part. In May, a procession of warriors winds through the streets for the Kameoka Mitsuhide Festival, tracing the memory of Akechi Mitsuhide, who built his castle town here in the late sixteenth century.

Come autumn, the Kikyo no Sato lights flicker on through September and October, and the market stalls fill with Tamba matsutake and Tamba kuri. The smell of those mushrooms — earthy, faintly resinous — is as much a signal of the season as any calendar. Kameoka does not perform its identity loudly. It simply continues producing things: semiconductors in the industrial zones, mountain yam in the fields, and a particular quality of morning air that arrives with the fog and dissolves before anyone thinks to name it.