I stepped into an old Japanese-style building.
Wooden pillars, lattice doors, rooms laid with tatami. Photographs bearing the marks of time hung on the walls, and one side was filled with the autographs of famous visitors.
The building had stood for many years, but it was well cared for.
I liked the distinctive smell of the wood. I liked the old-fashioned atmosphere that had settled into the space, too.
Beyond a sliding door, I could see a small courtyard.
Wooden window frames and glass doors framed the garden like a picture. There were trees and stones in the garden.
I sat in the tatami room and looked out at it.
It was lovely to have a small garden like this within the building. It suited the old house.
The place was Hokkyokusei, or “North Star,” a restaurant specialising in omurice in Osaka’s Shinsaibashi district.
Opened in 1922, it is known as one of the birthplaces of Japanese omurice.
According to the story told by the restaurant, in 1925 the owner created a new dish for a regular customer with a delicate stomach, who always ate an omelette and plain rice. The new dish was rice wrapped in egg.
That, the story goes, was how omurice was born.
The present Shinsaibashi main restaurant is not the building in which the business began. But it retains the character of an old Japanese house.
I had found the restaurant while planning my trip to Osaka.
A place said to have first made omurice. I wanted to go there and taste the dish that had been served for so many years.
I like old places like this.
I like old houses and old things. In Korea, too, I seek out long-established restaurants, and when I see an object bearing the marks of time, I find myself wanting to own it.
What sort of lives had the people who passed through this place lived? How many hands had that object passed through?
To be old is to have lived through all that time. Things that have remained until now, cherished in someone’s hands, sometimes forgotten.
I am drawn to the time they have endured and lived through.
Perhaps there is a little greed in that feeling.
Perhaps I want to feel, all at once, the long years I have never lived, simply by spending a little time in that house.
Yellow omurice arrived on a black plate.
A soft layer of egg wrapped around the fried rice, with red sauce served alongside.
From the outside, it looked much like any other omurice.
I opened one side with my spoon.
Beneath the thin layer of egg, the fried rice appeared.
I took a spoonful and put it in my mouth.
Oh, my!
The first thought that came as it touched my tongue was, “It melts.”
Could an omelette really be this soft?
The egg gently dissolved in my mouth, mingling with the fried rice and sauce.
The omurice was truly delicious.
But perhaps the food alone was not the reason its taste stayed with me for so long.
The smell of old wood, the atmosphere of the tatami room, the courtyard beyond the sliding door.
Perhaps the feeling of that place was another seasoning added to the food.
Even after I returned from the trip, I sometimes thought of the omurice I had eaten that day.
A dish with a hundred years of history, and a house bearing the marks of time. I remembered them together with the brief time I had spent there.
That day, in an old house, I ate a century of time.
