Glen Taylor is on a mission. He wants to help dispel the notion that English food is terrible. "Forget any negative image. I'm out to prove it's easy to make, tastes terrific and is very healthy."

To this end, he organizes cooking classes, and on Sunday afternoons opens his home as a cafe called Kabocha Pot (Pumpkin Pot). Last week he had five customers. "Two were regulars -- a mother and daughter -- and three male hikers. Being hot and sweaty, they wouldn't come into the house, but were happy to sit outside and eat their way through the menu."

It is an idyllic setting: a small traditional house backed by mountainside at the top of a slope to the left of Shogyo-in Temple, in Akiya, on the west coast of the Miura Peninsula. You follow a path around the side of the house and, leaving shoes outside, enter through the window. "The 'genkan' (hallway) is too small. Anyway, this way customers walk through the garden." (Wild garden, more like. Life is a continuous battle to keep bamboo at bay.)