07/12/2026
From Tokyo, I took the Shinkansen to Kyoto. Forty minutes and it felt like a different world entirely.
Kyoto has a stillness to it that I have not found anywhere else. Where Tokyo hums and pulses, Kyoto simply breathes.
Walking through its shrines, moss gardens, and quiet streets, I felt something settle in me that rarely does when I am traveling.
I stayed in a small ryokan with its own hot spring in the room. Every morning I would soak before the city woke up, watching the steam rise and disappear. It is the kind of ritual that makes you wonder why you do not live more slowly all the time.
There is something about Kyoto that makes the idea of a simpler life feel possible. A crane standing still in the river. A garden so considered it looks like it has always been exactly this way. I caught myself thinking, more than once, that I could live here one day. I still think about it.
This is NOTICINGS. The everyday scenes and places that shape how I think about design, objects, and the spaces we inhabit.
Is there a place that has ever made you want to stay forever?
