I've touched on the history of Kyoto and Nara over the past month, so will not again bring up their past, except for one ideal look back at this region of Japan.  You can read  Eating as our ancestors did  from this weekend's issue of  The Japan Times , but I'll quickly summarize: Researchers are trying to learn what the country ate 1300 years ago, so are looking at the Nara period from 710-794. Nara is the easternmost site of the Silk Road, and to this area first came to Japan religion and rice in water culture. Essentially, then, there was rice, fish and vegetables.   But fish went bad quickly, so they dried it or added salt. The making of soup from dried fish flakes (usually bonito, a type of tuna) led to what became the notion of umami, the essence of deliciousness, for glutamic acid is found in the flesh/bones, which gets converted to monosodium glutamate, almost another term for umami. The sodium to preserve fish, however, no doubt led to all kinds of ailments, loweri