[In Search of the Last Meal of My Life] Evening creeping into a vast artistic space, and the lingering taste of herring soba.

January 31, 2026 (Sat)
Soba Udon Kaga (Honmachi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo)

Back when I still lived along the Keio Line, Hatsudai was nothing more than a point sandwiched between Shinjuku and Sasazuka, a place passed through without even being named.
It lacked memories as a town or any reason to linger; it was merely a place where train tracks, houses, and expressways overlapped in silence.
However, since I left this line, Hatsudai has changed quietly but surely.
Through redevelopment, the town was given a contour, and with the New National Theatre and Tokyo Opera City as its two massive artistic pillars, Hatsudai transformed from a 'town to pass through' into a 'town with a destination'.
Culture often attracts people, and the pace of people's footsteps changes the character of a town.
Hatsudai was right in the middle of that process.

On a Saturday afternoon, I got off at Hatsudai Station and walked toward the New National Theatre.
The New National Theatre is the only theater in Japan that consistently stages opera, ballet, and contemporary drama as a national institution.
Its architecture, composed of glass and stone, avoids excessive decoration while harboring a certain solemn silence, maintaining a strange tranquility in the middle of the city.
After checking the 2026 performance schedule, I stopped by the accompanying stage photography exhibition 'Irodori (Color)' and the stage costume exhibition 'Utsuroi (Transition)'.
'Irodori' was an exhibition that reconstructed the intersection of light, body, and emotion through photographs that captured the fleeting expression of performing arts, while 'Utsuroi' was an attempt to visualize the transformation of characters and time through the material of costumes.
The afterimages of the stage, which should have disappeared with the applause, were breathing in silence here.

Nevertheless, there was almost no one in the building except for the security guards.
In this vast artistic space representing Tokyo, only my footsteps echoed, and I felt as if I had been incorporated into the exhibits myself.
When I went outside, the winter air was still chilly.
From the shopping street near the station, someone's speech ahead of the House of Representatives election drifted by, drowned out by the roar of the expressway.
The words lost their meaning, and only the sound drifted.

It was 3:30 PM.
A white lantern and a noren curtain suddenly appeared in my field of vision.
Lately, I have been eating soba to a degree that surprises even myself.
Even with that awareness, the desire for soba suddenly rose in my heart as something irresistible.
Simple POP signs for herring soba and kakiage (mixed vegetable tempura) soba were posted beside the entrance.
The temptation of kakiage, the royal road of standing soba shops, was strong, but the words 'herring soba' rapidly increased in presence within me. Entering the shop, I found a gap for one person at the corner of the L-shaped counter.
It is a shop run by two men.
'Welcome!'
Guided by that voice, I pressed the herring soba button on the ticket machine without hesitation and said,
'Soba, please.'
'One herring, coming up!'
A spirited voice flew to the back.
As I stood, the shop, which holds about eight people, began to rotate again.
Before long, a Western man and a woman who appeared to be of mixed Western and Eastern descent entered.
The woman asked in fluent Japanese, 'There are two of us, is it okay to have one bowl?' and the owner accepted it easily.

'Herring soba, sorry for the wait!'
A bowl was placed in front of me.
A glossy herring lay in the center, and seaweed floated quietly beside it.
Adding chopped green onions, I took a slurp.
The herring soba at this shop does not have the sweetness of the candied fish coming to the fore excessively, and the balance with the dashi broth is maintained.
It was a taste of the golden mean, different from the richness I had in Sapporo or the lightness of Kyoto.

'Four more people outside! It's busy today,' a voice said.
It seems they close at 4:00 PM, but the customers keep coming.
That voice carried a certain satisfaction amidst the busyness.
The Western man was eating silently, without slurping the soba.
Thinking of a culture where slurping is avoided, I realized once again that soba is essentially a food that is completed only when slurped.
There is indeed a flavor that only emerges by making a sound.
When I finished eating, I went outside immediately.
Behind the expressway, the winter evening sky was quietly spreading.
A bowl of herring soba slurped at the foot of artistic hubs like the New National Theatre and Tokyo Opera City.
That trivial sense of happiness overlapped with the faint transition of the evening sky, and I felt as if it were quietly saving me in some way.
While the city is cold-hearted, it occasionally gives this kind of comfort for no reason.
I felt as if I had truly received that, along with the lingering heat of the bowl. ...