Everyone who cares about food makes a trip to the Tsukiji Market when they visit Tokyo.  Famed for its dawn tuna auctions and the extraordinary variety of fish for sale in the hundreds of stalls that fill its main hall, Tsukiji is the first stop for fresh fish destined not only for the finest restaurants in Tokyo but for Michelin-starred dining rooms around the world.

I was fortunate to have a tour guide for my first visit to Tsukiji, the one and only Lloyd Nakano, former managing director of Tokyo's ultra-luxury Hotel Seiyo Ginza and now a partner with Ernest Singer in The Japan Wine Project, an ambitious effort to produce Koshu wine for the international market.  [More on the wine later in my series that started today with Japan's Zen Winemakers.]

The brief but glorious life of the firefly is cause for celebration across Japan.  So it was a special treat when Masahiro Kato, our guide in Yamanashi, the prefecture hugging the foothills north of Mount Fuji, invited us to share a private firefly celebration with his extended family and friends at a hillside home overlooking the Yamanashi basin.

Fireflies thrive in the rotting wood found along creeks and streams like the ones that crisscross these hills.  The glow-in-the-dark beetles are increasingly hard to find; their habitats are under pressure in the increasingly urban prefectures close to Tokyo.  But in mid-June, festivals honoring hotaru remain popular.  These are the souls of soldiers killed in battle, and, to poets, a metaphor for love.

Ever since Fred Franzia's $2 Charles Shaw Chardonnay was awarded top honors in a California wine competition a few years back, state fair gold medals have lost a bit of their luster. And that's too bad because wine awards can indicate above average quality. The trick is to know what's faux and what's real.