A Perfect Breakfast, Nourishing and Unpretentious
A Perfect Breakfast, Nourishing and Unpretentious
Eggs in Japan
The schedules of businesses on the island had proved to be unpredictable. A phrase about “island time” comes to mind, though no one here bothered to use an adage to excuse unpunctuality. On Naoshima, an island in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, life is so serene it doesn’t even matter.
One of the so-called “art islands,” Naoshima is a surreal place, filled with sculptures, gorgeous museums designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, and a series of artist-renovated homes called the Art House Project.
I like long mornings, so I’d set out for a bakery that allegedly opened at 8 am, where I’d planned to spend a few hours before the Art Houses opened. Upon arriving around 8:30 I found it closed, with no activity inside and no indication of when it would be open. It didn’t make sense to walk back to my hostel, so I resigned myself to wandering. I saw a sign for a supermarket and made my way over but it, too, was closed. I began to lose hope for breakfast redemption.
Then I noticed a friendly wooden sign that said “open” in front of a house near the supermarket. I couldn’t see inside, but it seemed promising. I passed through the threshold, took off my shoes, and entered a café that seemed to be inside someone’s living room. The space was bright and filled with wooden tables. On the shelves sat an array of lovely vases, lamps, ceramic bowls, magazines, jars of preserved fruit, and flowers. A family of four sat on cushions at one of the tables, having breakfast. A TV was on in a corner, tuned to a Japanese cooking show in which an old woman was showing a young woman how to make the components of a meal. Attached to the main room was an average looking kitchen, cluttered with knick-knacks, piles of paper, and notes on the refrigerator, endearingly incongruous with the café atmosphere beside it.
I took a seat, and a kind-looking woman with graying hair in a ski vest and slippers came over with a menu. It wasn’t in English, but I gathered that the only choice was the breakfast set so I ordered it, accustomed by now to getting set meals without needing to know what they contained.
Soon after, she brought out a large black tray artfully arranged with coffee, thick buttered toast, a salad with the tasty miso dressing that seemed ubiquitous, yogurt with a kiwi sauce, and an egg with some salt. Like all the eggs that had graced the many bowls of ramen I’d had in Japan, this one was perfectly soft boiled, its yolk a bright, beautiful orange. The meal was simple and nourishing, unpretentious but somehow perfect.
Afterward I lingered awhile, in no hurry and at peace. Normally the sound of a TV would bother me, but I didn’t mind it. The family had left and it was just me in the sunlit space. The owner worked in her kitchen, washing vegetables, talking on the phone, unperturbed by my prolonged presence, a guest in her home. When ten o’clock arrived, I took my leave of the chance encounter and stumbled back out into the sunshine.