I had business in Osaka's Tsuruhashi area.
It's a neighborhood I had rarely visited before. I had no sense of the place at all. With some time to kill, I wandered aimlessly and discovered a motsunabe (offal hotpot) restaurant lit up under the elevated tracks.
Peering through the glass, I saw people with drinks in hand, gathered around bowls of motsunabe, likely chatting about this and that. Even though it was still early after opening, the place was already lively.
It was just after sunset and the kind of solid winter chill had begun to settle in. Trusting my nose, I half let myself be drawn in and went inside.
Steaming motsunabe and a little makgeolli. Plump, fresh horumon and authentic Korean kimchi that looked to have been sourced from Tsuruhashi's shopping street. My chopsticks kept moving. At the end, they added carefully chosen Chinese noodles from a long-established noodle maker into the pot. Before I knew it, the pot was empty. Unexpectedly, it became a moment that satisfied both body and soul.
Of course, I could have checked restaurant review sites in advance and picked a highly rated place. A quick search would probably have found restaurants with higher ratings. But that feeling of "unexpectedly finding a great place" is hard to get from that kind of deliberate selection.
Relying less on others' words or ratings and following your own intuition and judgment—even if the choice isn't the "best" or "right" one—can yield rewards richer than you might expect.
Standing on your own senses can feel a little uncertain, and at the same time, I think it's a quiet kind of freedom.
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Relying on my own ears and eyes
Standing on my own two feet alone
what inconvenience could there be?
("Not Leaning On" by Noriko Ibaragi)