Standing for 40 minutes at a station overlooking the sea | A day trip to see plums and the sea in Ibaraki (February 2026) #7

It was just past 2:00 PM when I stepped off the train at Hitachi Station.

The moment I passed through the ticket gate and looked up,
there it was—the sea.

It was much closer than I had imagined.
The blue spreading out through the glass filled my entire field of vision.

I started to reach into my pocket to take a photo, but stopped.
First, I just stood there.

My wife said,
“Was it always this close to the sea?”

Indeed.
There is almost nothing unnecessary between the station and the sea.

The Pacific Ocean simply spreads out calmly from the high ground.

🚉Time spent standing still

It was a clear day.
There were few clouds, and the waves were not rough.

It didn't have the dramatic intensity of a movie, but
that calmness was just right.

This is today's destination.
The moment I thought that, the depths of my heart became quiet.

More than the moment I arrived,
the time spent standing there doing nothing afterward felt more profound.

Photos can wait until later.
First, I look with my eyes.

The sound, the wind, and the light,
all enter my body just as they are.

🚉A 40-minute margin

There were about 40 minutes until the next local train.

Looking only at the numbers, it’s a long wait.
But at this station, it didn't feel that way.

I sat on a bench, stood up again, and looked at the sea once more.
There were few words.

Sometimes our eyes met,
and we nodded.

It was a time of near nothingness.

I wasn't thinking about anything, but I wasn't feeling nothing either.

I was just there.

Perhaps the climax of a journey isn't cheers or commemorative photos, but moments like this.

🚉 The train home

Before long, the train pulls into the platform.

As I took my eyes off the sea, I felt just a little bit of sadness.

"I want to stay here a little longer."

I didn't say it out loud, but I feel like we were both thinking the same thing.

As the train started to move, the sea slowly drifted away.

A sense of fulfillment and the feeling of the end approaching. Both were quietly side by side.

A journey ends just when you wish it would continue. That's why you want to come back again.

While burning the blue outside the window into my memory, I remained silent for a while.

You can look back at photos later. But that 40 minutes of "nothingness" probably only exists right there.

(To be continued)