The day began in Arita, where the scent of old kilns still lingers in the streets.
Every spring, this quiet town in Saga Prefecture transforms into a slow-moving sea of footsteps and ceramic clatter—the Arita and Hirasumi Pottery Festival. Rows of stalls stretch for kilometers, spilling porcelain in all shades of white and blue, from antique Nabeshima plates to imperfect yunomi cups, glazed like clouds with cracked edges.
You go there not to shop quickly, but to wander.
To feel texture with your fingers.
To watch old potters who once fired with firewood now sell their legacy beneath plastic tents.
I walked for hours.
Arita to Hirasumi.
Back again.
Down side streets, into family-run shops with tatami mats and handwritten signs.
Some vendors offered tea. Others stories.
No rush.
No pressure.
Just clay shaped into permanence by patient hands.
When I finally checked the bus schedule, I realized I had missed the last afternoon ride back.
Typical.
I didn’t feel annoyed, just tired—bone tired.
So I walked again, slowly, to Takeo City.
And there, almost without planning it, I ended up inside the Takeo City Library.
—
It wasn’t like any library I’d been to.
A long glass wall filtered the light just enough to feel like sunset all day.
Wooden beams lined the ceilings like a temple.
Books arranged with care, not crammed.
There was a Starbucks inside, but it didn’t feel loud. Somehow, it fit.
A quiet hum of life, not distraction.
I sat for two hours without reading a single thing.
Just listening.
To paper sliding.
To children whispering.
To a student somewhere gently tapping a pencil, lost in thought.
Sometimes rest doesn’t mean stopping.
It just means stopping the need to make progress.
And that’s what the library gave me—space to stop without guilt.
—
When the sun began to slip behind the mountains, I walked to the Takeo Onsen gardens.
No plan.
Just enough light for the maple leaves to flicker like small lamps in the dusk.
There’s an old camphor tree there—one of Japan’s largest.
It looks less like a tree and more like a forgotten god, half-asleep, letting its moss grow wild and its roots split stones without asking permission.
I stood in front of it for a long time.
Didn’t pray.
Didn’t think.
Just stood.
Sometimes, being in the presence of something ancient is more nourishing than food.
But by the time I made it back to town, I realized I was starving.
—
That’s how I found the ramen place.
Tiny.
Tucked into the corner of a silent block.
One old woman slicing green onions, chop chop, with machine rhythm.
One man behind the counter. Middle-aged. Wearing an apron stained by years of broth and time.
When I walked in, he looked up.
I asked, “What do you recommend?”
He said, “Ramen.”
I smiled.
Tried again.
“What kind of ramen?”
He shrugged. “Ramen.”
So I sat.
And I waited.
And eventually, a bowl arrived.
Steam rising in soft spirals.
The smell of green onion so thick it felt like air itself had been seasoned.
The broth was clear, not showy.
The noodles—chewy, almost elastic.
No egg. No frills. Just onion, noodle, broth.
A few slices of pork curled gently at the edge.
Everything was touched by green onion.
Every bite a variation of the same sharp, earthy note.
It was perfect.
—
The Simplicity That Doesn’t Apologize
That bowl of ramen taught me something I’d forgotten:
- Don’t explain too much. Let the thing speak for itself.
- You don’t need variety to have depth. Just honesty.
- Sometimes the clearest moves are the strongest.
- When you strip away what’s unnecessary, the essence finally has space to shine.
It reminded me of a principle once taught by a man who studied more than war—he believed in cutting clean, not to impress, but to end confusion.
The way the ramen shop owner answered my question with the same word—ramen—again and again.
Because sometimes, that’s all there is.
The work.
The bowl.
The moment.
The lesson is always this:
Refinement is not addition.
It’s subtraction.
Keep removing until what’s left is undeniable.
And that night, in a near-empty shop in Takeo, with steam rising in front of me and silence outside,
what was left
was ramen.
And it was enough.
life 