Feeling It in Niigata, I Realized: It Wasn't Set Up for Me

Last week, on 8/12, I went from Tokyo to Niigata.

A typhoon was approaching, and everywhere in Kanto was forecast rain over Obon. Niigata was clear. So I went with Niigata. That was the whole reason.

The purpose was to "feel." That's all.

Take the sea. Up till now, for me, a beach honestly wasn't a place to look at the sea itself. It was a place I looked at with an ulterior motive—maybe something will start, maybe I'll meet someone. Not that—just looking at the sea, as the sea, with my heart. This time I went to do that.

Because I have an old habit. Even when I can move as I intended, right there my mind isn't present. Before I taste what's in front of me, my head is already thinking about the next thing. Thinking about something else. I came all this way, yet I'm not in the place I came to. It had always been like that.

So, Niigata.

The first place I went was Nozumi Beach. Even though it was high season, maybe because I arrived early, there was no one there. I just gazed at that sea. I won't say the mental noise went to zero. But for the first time in a while, I felt "glad" from the heart. Just glad to look at the sea. That one simple thing, I'd been unable to do for so long.

Next, near the summit of Mt. Yahiko. There was an open field for paragliding, and here too there was no one. Look left and there's the Noto Peninsula, look right and there's Sado Island. Japan is smaller than I thought, I felt. But the sea, the sky, and the few clouds drifting there were boundlessly wide.

I also visited Yahiko Shrine. Behind it was Mt. Yahiko, which I'd just climbed. Grand, and divine. The line to pray was short, and my turn came right away. I put my hands together, and when I glanced back behind me, it had become a huge line.

For lunch, hegi soba at a roadside station. On the way, we'd been saying Niigata means tare-katsu, and just as I was wanting to eat it, there on the menu was a "hegi soba and tare-katsu bowl set." Of course I ate it. When I left the shop, another huge line.

The sea, the summit, the shrine, the soba—what I received from each was completely different. A wide view, or stillness, or divinity, or the thing I'd wanted to eat. But what they had in common was: it got crowded after I received it. No one there, or before the crowd. Every time, I got to receive it first.

Honestly, when things go this smoothly, it starts to feel like it was all set up for me.

But after that, when I went to tour a sake brewery, Google Maps said it was open, yet it was plainly closed. I don't drink when I'm driving, but it felt like I was being told "don't even buy any," and I couldn't help laughing. Not everything, every single thing, had been arranged the way I wanted.

And I thought: it wasn't set up for me, was it.

It wasn't that something outside was arranging things for me. The sea, the scenery, the empty timing, that soba—all of it was there to begin with. It's just that I usually couldn't receive it. Mind not present, thinking about the next thing, just passing it by.

This time I decided to "feel," intentionally left the house early, and cleared away the mental noise as much as I could. Just that, and I could finally receive what had been there all along—before the crowd, while it was still quiet. It looked smooth not because the outside was arranged, but because I could stay a self that was able to receive.

• From mind-not-present, I decided to "feel."

• It wasn't prepared—it was there to begin with.

• When you clear the mental noise, you can receive.