Real Adults Eat Herring Soba (Fourth Bowl: Yabusoba, Umeda)

Now, the question is what to eat when visiting Osaka.
This is a rather deep-rooted issue.

I don't know Osaka.
I was born and raised in Tohoku, and went to university in Tokyo.
I lived in Sendai for a while after that, but now I've settled in Saitama.
I have experience living west of Tokyo, but only as far as Nagoya.

In other words, Osaka is a place I only visit for business trips or travel.

What should I eat in Osaka?
This is a quietly troubling question every time.
The restaurants I was taken to by acquaintances in Osaka were all good.
Kushikatsu, okonomiyaki, udon, yakiniku.
Of course, they are delicious.
And above all, food in Osaka is bright and fun.

But the problem is when I am alone.

The courage to enter a kushikatsu shop alone.
The resolve to sit in front of a teppan grill alone.
What kind of face should I wear when entering, and what kind of face should I have while eating?
When I start thinking about things like that, I suddenly feel like I don't belong.

If I were younger, I might have been able to enter on impulse.
But after passing forty, my self-consciousness has grown strangely.
I read the room unnecessarily and brace myself unnecessarily.

Because of all this, I jumped into a soba shop in Umeda Hankyu, clutching at straws.

A soba shop is reassuring.
I know the etiquette.
My body remembers where to sit, how to order, and the proper behavior after finishing a meal.

Even if a person from Tohoku is slurping soba with a serious face, no one says anything.
Well, they probably wouldn't say anything at a kushikatsu shop either, but it's a matter of my own feelings.

And what I ordered, even though I had come all the way to Osaka, was herring soba.

The bowl placed in front of me was quietly beautiful.
The noodles, the broth, and the herring.
There was nothing forced about it.
A beauty that doesn't shout, 'Look at me.'

Perhaps because of the Umeda location, the broth had a slight acidity to it,
which felt urban, and that was also good.

I finish slurping the soba and gaze at the broth remaining at the bottom of the bowl.
I am not full. But I am satisfied.

Business trips wear you down a little bit somewhere.
In an unknown city, surrounded by unknown faces, speaking at the speed of an unknown language.

At the end of such a day,
being able to return to a taste I know.

That is not a luxury.
Rather, it might be a small anchor
that I have come to need precisely because I have aged.

My memories of Osaka remained not with the oil of flashy kushikatsu,
but with the steam of quiet herring soba.

I think that is fine.

Even if I don't force myself to eat what is 'typical',
I choose what makes me feel at ease.

Perhaps that is the way of traveling once you reach your forties.

And then, I head off to the next business trip.
With a slightly more composed expression.