Yumiko Kano, who publishes vegetarian recipe books, recommends wheat miso from Hatsuyuki-ya (in Japanese), and I ordered white and red wheat miso. On their website it says that 'the miso is made of Hadaka wheat from Ehime prefecture, soybeans from Saga prefecture, and natural salt. No artificial additives, no alcohol' and '21% less sodium than standard'. I was thinking to myself: 'It sounds very good for my health, but it might not be very tasty'. But the miso soup I cooked with the red miso was good. It was quite sweet though.

I thought the onion in the miso soup made the soup sweet, but I read that wheat miso is sweeter than rice miso because of the amount of yeast. I was quite amazed about the sweetness of the white wheat miso, because I've been using dark red rice miso, which was quite salty, for a long long time. I heard that Ozouni (new year's rice cake soup) in Kyoto is sweet, and now I know that they use sweet miso, not sugar. (There are different ways (in Japanese) of making Ozouni in different areas of Japan). I also ordered Amazake, sweet non-alcoholic sake, for the new year. It looks very good! In the box I received from the shop, there was a very cheesy old-fashioned calendar, like something from grandmother's place, but I was quite happy to have it.