Is That All? | Amano Writing Club

It has been a year since I took over my father's soba shop.
I have managed to keep it from going under, just barely.

For forty years, my father ran this shop on his own.
I had helped out a little here and there.
But I never had any intention of learning the craft seriously.
My father never forced me to, either.

A regular customer, an old man, set down his teacup and said,
"The previous owner's soba had more... aroma than this."

I know. I know that.
I have done everything I can remember.
I have tried experimenting, too.
I changed the flour, changed the water, and changed how I knead it.
Still, it doesn't taste like his.

At my wit's end, I visited a man who was my father's senior apprentice.
He is over eighty now, and he was still making soba by himself in the mountains.

He let me watch him make it.
Mixing in the water, gathering the flour, kneading, rolling, and cutting.
There were no special techniques, no secret ingredients, nothing.

"What is the secret?"
I asked, clinging to hope.
I was convinced there had to be one definitive thing.

The old man said without stopping his hands,
"You just combine the water and the flour well. That is all."

"...Is that all?"
I felt let down.

"There is nothing for me to teach you."
The old man continued making soba.

Unable to give up, I asked,
"Is that all there is?"

For the first time, the old man stopped his hands and looked at me.
"That is all there is."

Then, he turned back to his soba.
"It is just repeating that."

On the train ride home, I looked out the window.
Did my father really do only that until the day he died?

The next morning, I stood in the shop earlier than usual.

Thirty-nine more years of just this.

Mixing in the water. Gathering the flour.

I will participate in Mitsuru Amano's Amano Writing Club.

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