What is a Recipe For? Hosted by Hannah Kirshner and Clarissa Wei, with guest lecturer Bryan Washington
Join us for a five-night, four-day food writing retreat in Yamanaka Onsen—a mountain hot spring town with centuries of history as a destination for rest and restoration as well as cultural exchange. Soak up the natural environment and delve into local foodways while honing your craft with an intimate group of six to eight writers. Each day, lectures and hands-on workshops in the open-air garden kitchen at Mokkei, a 100-year-old farmhouse, will explore the function, ethics and art of recipe writing, and how the same concerns apply to good writing in general.
September 15–19, 2025
Who Should Apply
Whether you want to compile a family cookbook, make a recipe zine, or shift your focus as a professional writer, we encourage you to apply. The retreat provides space for reflection and 1-on-1 consultation, along with the excitement of travel (which often gives us the perspective shift and inspiration we need to get unstuck). The application process should be quick, and is meant to help us build a diverse and cohesive group who can encourage and inspire each other. Your responses help us tailor lectures and activities to your interests and needs, so please answer from your heart and don't overthink your responses!
Applications due by April 15, with invitations issued in May
Cost
$3500 USD for single occupancy (6 spots available), $3300 for double occupancy (2 spots available)
This includes all retreat activities, accommodation, dinner the first night, and daily breakfast and lunch. It does not include flights or other transportation, except shuttle pick-up from the local train station at a designated time.
first deposit of $1000 due in June, upon invitation
full payment due by August 1
Daily Schedule
Mornings are dedicated to lectures, discussions, and hands-on activities, while afternoons and evenings are yours to read, write, or explore the town. After lunch Hannah and Clarissa will have office hours, where you’re welcome to book 1-on-1 time with us to workshop ideas. We’ll offer daily writing prompts and readings, but this homework is optional—we want you to savor your time here.
The exact timing and content may change slightly, but will roughly follow this schedule.
September 15: Arrive in time for dinner prepared by your hosts, Clarissa Wei and Hannah Kirshner, and get to know your fellow writers.
September 16: The day begins with a morning lecture on the nuts and bolts or recipe writing, followed by a tea ceremony at a house nearby. Next, enjoy a guided town tour led by Hannah. We’ll end with lunch at a restaurant where you can experience the amazing fish, vegetables and rice this region has to offer.
September 17: A cooking session with a local auntie, followed by a tea break. Afterward, we’ll workshop a recipe together as a group before enjoying lunch that includes what we’ve cooked together.
September 18: We start off talking about recipes as a form of documentation before breaking for tea with wagashi, Japanese sweets. Guest lecturer Bryan Washington joins us for a reading and discussion, followed by bento lunch.
September 19: A hands-on food styling exercise helps us explore visual representation of recipes. After teatime, we discuss ways to get your recipes to your intended audience. We’ll have our final lunch together and say our goodbyes.
note: Yamanaka’s town festival, Koi Koi Matsuri, takes place the weekend following the retreat, so we encourage you to stick around for a few more days!
Topics We’ll Cover
Recipe as Service
The function of a recipe, its building blocks, and conventions
Offering value to the reader
Testing and troubleshooting
Writing for your target audience
Recipe as Archive
Sourcing and selecting recipes
Giving credit where it’s due
Navigating cultural representation
Approaching and gaining the trust of interviewees
Recipe as Narrative
Incorporating sensory details
Balancing narrative and culinary detail
Food as an indication of identity and community
Cooking to write
Visualizing a Recipe
Creating mood and personality
Choosing appropriate props
Basic food styling tips
Sharing Your Recipe
Ways to reach your audience
Pitching a narrative that sells
Industry insider advice
Location
Yamanaka Onsen is located in the Kaga area of Ishikawa prefecture, where mountains, sea and farmland intersect. This retreat offers interaction with the local community, its rich culinary resources and distinct arts. Hannah Kirshner has been living in and writing about this town for nearly a decade, and this spring she opened Mokkei, a community kitchen in a kominka (old folk house) that she is gradually restoring. Morning workshops will be held in the open-air garden kitchen, around a large table, with a tile roof over our heads and the autumn breeze carrying the sound of a nearby river. Weather can be fickle this time of year, so be prepared for it to be hot and muggy or a bit chilly (nights and mornings may be cold).
note: this is Yamanaka Onsen NOT Yamanakako or Lake Yamanaka
Getting Here
Please arrive no later than 3 pm on the first day. The nearest airport, Komatsu, has direct flights from Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo (Haneda), and other points in Japan. From there, it’s a 35-minute taxi ride to Yamanaka Onsen. If you’re arriving in Japan a few days earlier, we recommend taking the train to Kagaonsen Station, where we will provide a free shuttle at a designated time. There are direct trains from Tokyo (less than three hours), and one transfer from Kyoto (about 2 hours).
Accommodation
Your shared home for the week will be one of two old Japanese houses, a simple clean place that gives you a taste of ordinary local life. Sleep on a futon, and enjoy daily baths at the public onsen nearby (tattoos are allowed at the public onsen here). You’ll have your own room (or share one with a preferred companion), but please note that old Japanese homes don’t have much sound privacy, and the toilet and shower rooms are shared. Kitchenettes are equipped for making coffee and tea. Restaurants, a supermarket, and convenience store are all within comfortable walking distance, as is Mokkei.
Meals
Your stay includes dinner the day you arrive, plus daily breakfast, tea, and lunch. Breakfast will be delivered to your guesthouse. Tea and lunch are shared in the open-air kitchen where we hold our workshops, or nearby. Other than the welcome dinner, you’re on your own in the evenings and free to explore the town. We’re happy to help make reservations.
a note on dietary restrictions: We can easily accommodate a pescatarian diet; however, due to the intimate size of our group and our intention to interact with the local culinary culture, we are unable to cater to other specific restrictions or preferences. If you have a severe food allergy or health concern, please let us know.
Special Concerns
If you need accommodation for a disability, please contact us directly at foodwritingretreat [at] gmail [dot] com so we can talk about how to make the available space work for you (though we are somewhat limited by the infrastructure of rural Japan). For trans and non-binary folks we can recommend alternatives to the gender-segregated public bath so you can safely and comfortably enjoy an onsen experience!
About Us
Hannah Kirshner is a nonfiction author, Clarissa Wei is a cookbook author, and Bryan Washington is a fiction author. All three have published recipes in The New York Times and elsewhere. During this retreat we’ll share our different approaches to food writing, each rooted strongly in a sense of community and place.
Clarissa Wei is a journalist and an award-winning cookbook author. Her debut, Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories From The Island Nation, won the IACP Julia Child First Book Award and was a James Beard Award finalist. It was named a Best Cookbook of 2023 by The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Foreign Policy, among other places. Her second cookbook is about postpartum recovery and will be published by Norton in 2026. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now resides in Taipei, Taiwan.
Hannah Kirshner is author and illustrator of Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town. Her reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Food & Wine, and on the Proof podcast from America’s Test Kitchen and The World from PRX and GBH. She’s been a Solutions Journalism Network Climate Initiative fellow, and winner of an International Gourmand award for writing on Japan. Kirshner grew up on a small farm outside Seattle, studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, worked as a food stylist in New York, and now spends most of her time in rural Ishikawa, Japan.
Bryan Washington is the author of the story collection Lot and the novels Memorial, Family Meal, and Palaver. A National Book Award 5 Under 35 Honoree, he is the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize, the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, the Ernest J. Gaines Award, two Lambda Literary Awards, and an O. Henry Prize, and he has been a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence, and the James Tait Black Prize. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times, his writing has also appeared in Granta, The New York Times Magazine, New York, Time, GQ, and Esquire, among many other places. He is based in Tokyo.
Questions?
If you have further questions, please contact us: foodwritingretreat [at] gmail [dot] com