You know that sound that makes you shiver in a restaurant? The one where the soup teleports from the spoon down someone’s throat. Yes, exactly that. The very one echoing from my mouth right now.

Here it’s normal. It means you are enjoying the meal. I wonder who decided that this sound counts as bad manners in our part of the world. I have to admit that the slurp feels liberating right now.

You know that sound that makes you shiver in a restaurant? The one where the soup teleports from the spoon down someone’s throat. Yes, exactly that. The very one echoing from my mouth right now.

I’m at the end of a ramen marathon: ramen for lunch in Fukuoka and ramen for dinner, now, in Osaka. Not for breakfast, at least.

Ramen has been my comfort food since my time in Berlin. It fills me up and soothes body and mood. There, it was also a good antidote to the dark cold winter. Here, just swap the cold winter for pouring rain and the recipe still works.

At the traffic lights. On the metro. Almost everyone around me has their eyes on a screen.

I do that too at times. More often than I like to admit to myself.

Here, though, it feels like a prelude to a dystopian future where we will end up absorbed by those tiny screens. Maybe our faces will become screens. Maybe we are already there.

Thank you, paper. Another antidote of mine.

I’ve never appreciated this little notebook more than now. It’s keeping me from grabbing the phone every time I have a thought I want to jot down. A way to keep my experience somewhere tangible, and not only in my poor memory.

More writing, less tapping.

My eyes are adjusting to the morning light.

I feel tired, a bit hungover.

Probably all the sake we tried with David wasn’t as gentle as it seemed.

My mouth closes. My teeth slowly sink into the bread. This toast is waking my senses. More or less the same way a fire alarm woke us on our first night here in Osaka with Cris.

Since our first visit a few weeks ago, I’ve fallen in love with this kissa. Their egg toast is delicious. Today even more. A lifeline before the trip to Kanazawa.

On my right, a guy waits for his breakfast, head down on the table. From the few seconds I saw of his face, I wonder if he slept at all last night.

Coffee lands on his table. Nothing changes.

His head moves a little, only to settle back between his arms. The cloud of steam coming from the coffee seems to protect his sleep from the rest of the world.

My mind drifts to last night. Contrast. David and I agreed it's the word for Japan. It fits the weather of these two days in Osaka, and almost everything else I have seen in this country so far.

A faint sound catches my attention: the guy has decided it’s better to keep sleeping with his head against the wall. Now that his face is open to the world I can see his suffering in his expression. A suffering that clashes with the peace of the room.

Contrast.

Till the next missive,

— M

PS. If you ever happen to visit Osaka or Kyoto, reach out to my friend David. On top of being a talented photographer, he also knows both cities better than most guidebooks.