My wife reads the 今日の料理 (Kyo no Ryori) magazine and watches its associated TV show like it’s some kind of religion. I flip through the magazine as a guide to what will show up on my table sometime during the week. But their was an interesting ad on the rear this week for pure-cane sugar （きびさと、きび砂糖 - there seems to be no kanji for きび). Sugar and salt are the elixirs of life. Once, in a remote corner of Kagoshima, I came across a small salt still - the owner told me she takes discarded wood from construction sites to boil the local water down to its solidities, and that the reason the salt is so good is due to the calcium that the coral in the water provides. She let me buy some with the warning that she normally does not sell to individual customers, only those in her network (high-end restaurants). .