No, it’s more to warn potential travel companions that you may (definitely) be dragged along to any number of distilleries, cheese shops, breweries, and many other places where there is a lot of mold. It’s wildly delicious, very intentional mold, of course. On one such trip to Japan where, yes, I went on a fermentation-focused tour, I stumbled on what might be my new favorite mold: rice koji. In short, mellow and sweet rice koji is made by taking cooked rice and inoculating it with Aspergillus oryzae, the same naturally occurring culture you’ll find in sake, soy sauce, tamari, mirin, amazake, and miso, just for starters. Once I landed back home, I grabbed a bag of local-to-me koji maker Amazake Co.’s white rice koji to re-create a whole laundry list of dishes I got to eat all across Japan — most notably a salty-sweet shio koji ice cream I couldn’t stop dreaming about.