Lately, I feel like baking has become much more a part of my daily life than it used to be.
Baking scones in the morning.
The sweet, toasty smell slowly filling the room.
I had always longed for moments like that.
The kind of quiet, peaceful kitchen scenes
you see in dramas, books, or anime.
Not just something for special weekends,
but the kind of life where,
the moment you think,
“I feel like baking today,”
you can simply begin.
Little by little,
that small dream has started becoming part of my real life.
Of course, it didn’t go smoothly from the start.
In the beginning,
I scattered flour everywhere,
used more and more kitchen tools,
and before I knew it,
the sink would be overflowing with dishes.
Most importantly,
the scones never turned out with the texture I had imagined.
I felt disappointed many times.
And yet,
for some reason,
I never stopped baking.
Again and again,
I made scones.
If I simply followed ordinary recipes,
using wheat flour would probably be much easier.
But I’ve become particular about using rice flour.
Partly because I noticed that
when I eat wheat regularly,
my stomach tends to feel bloated,
and my digestion slows down.
That doesn’t mean I started disliking wheat.
Actually,
foods made with wheat are incredibly appealing.
Most delicious things contain wheat.
So instead of thinking of wheat as something to avoid,
I decided to think of it as an occasional treat.
When I eat it,
I want to enjoy it fully.
But for everyday baking,
I wanted to try using rice flour instead.
And somehow,
using rice flour makes me happy because it comes from Japanese rice.
Of course,
Japanese-grown wheat also exists.
But rice flour carries a certain feeling of “Japaneseness” to me.
I think that’s also why
I’ve recently wanted to make baked goods using kinako.
For a long time,
I admired foreign countries.
And honestly,
I still do.
I’m still deeply drawn to overseas cultures and ways of living.
But after starting to create videos as Sushi Couple,
I slowly began paying attention
to the beauty within Japan too.
Rice flour.
Kinako.
Miso.
Soy sauce.
Things that had always been so ordinary to me
that I barely thought about them.
But watching people from other countries
become interested in Japanese life made me realize:
“I actually still know very little about my own culture.”
And strangely,
that realization turned into curiosity.
I wanted to know more.
I think food is one of the gentlest entrances
into another culture.
“What does this taste like?”
“How do people eat it?”
“What kind of daily life gave birth to this food?”
Through those small curiosities,
people slowly begin to move closer to one another’s cultures.
Maybe this sounds a little grand,
but I think I’ve been thinking about “peace” somewhere in my heart since I was little.
And now,
I’ve realized something.
The more inner space I have within myself,
the more naturally I can feel curiosity
toward other people, cultures, and values I don’t yet know.
If people didn’t fear differences so quickly,
or reject things reactively—
if we could simply think,
“I’d like to know a little more about that,”
or,
“That’s kind of nice,”
then maybe,
the world could become just a little gentler than it is now.
And so today again,
while pouring rice flour and kinako from their bags,
sneezing because the powder floated into my nose,
I find myself thinking
about those slightly oversized dreams.