We are sitting up late sipping plum wine from small glasses at Atsuko Watanabe's dinner table next to the woodstove in an old farmhouse deep in the mountains of Shikoku. Her husband, Gufudo, is washing the dishes (the Watanabes' own handmade pottery) from tonight's seven-course Indian vegetarian meal.
Watanabe has been telling me about her many years of living in India.
"I was influenced greatly by the Indians in two ways," she says. "First, spirituality is absolutely central to their lives in a way that it isn't here in Japan for us. Secondly, I recognized that humans could live completely fulfilling lives in simple houses without much money or electrical appliances. This was an entirely new concept for me.