There's no finer way to eat on a chilly winter evening than sitting around a bubbling nabe hot pot. No matter what the ingredients — meat, fish, tofu or vegetables — just cooking and eating from the same communal casserole is nourishment for both body and soul.
It's even better if you're sharing that hot-pot with a select group of close friends, and especially so if the setting is more than a little bit special. That was certainly the case the other night when we dined at Kamikozawa-tei.
You don't have to be an architect to appreciate that this low-slung freestanding single-story house in the residential heart of Shirokanedai in Shinagawa Ward is a classic of its kind. With its clean, spare lines, monochrome facade of glass and unclad concrete and uncluttered compound, it is a modest masterpiece of Japanese modernist understatement.