Each summer invites a turning — a soft shift in pace, a return to the deeper rhythms beneath our schedules and roles.
For me, that turning takes the shape of a migration — from our hilltop home in Karatsu, where I guide the Mirukashi Salon, to the salt-kissed coast of Maine, where I return to rest and renew. But the deeper journey is internal: from doing to being, from output to integration.
Perhaps you feel it too — an invitation to slow down, to soften into the season, to look at your life with a gentler gaze.
In these moments, I’m reminded that beauty is not bound by geography.
What matters isn’t where we are, but how we see.
When guests leave Mirukashi Salon and return to their own homes — whether in Paris, New York, or Illinois — they often tell me that something subtle has shifted. They find themselves cooking differently. Moving with more care. Noticing the world around them with new eyes.
I know that feeling intimately.
Because when I leave Japan each summer and return to Maine, I go through the same quiet integration. What I bring with me isn’t specific flavors or ingredients — it’s rhythm, ritual, reverence, a way of paying attention. A way of being.
This is the heart of Mirukashi. A way of life that can root itself anywhere.
Wherever you find yourself this summer — in motion or stillness, in bloom or rest — I hope you’ll find small ways to live this sensibility:
- To cook with care, even if just for yourself
- To walk a little slower, noticing the textures of your world
- To create beauty not as decoration, but as devotion
This is the Salon, alive in each of us.
