Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to live well—not in a flashy way, but in a steady, grounded, deeply satisfying way. In this week’s vlog, I invite you to spend a quiet day with me in our 100-year-old Japanese farmhouse. It’s not a life of convenience or excess, but one shaped by seasons, small rituals, and making do with what we have. And honestly? That makes it all the more precious.
We’ll begin in the garden—where summer vegetables are coming in strong and I finally got around to planting the flowerbed I’ve been meaning to prep for weeks. I’ll show you the black-eyed peas and konjac we’re growing, and share why the scent of freshly turned soil always calms me, especially in times like these.
Inside, I bake a nostalgic pecan pie from scratch using my go-to buttery pie crust recipe (yes, the recipe is in the video details!), and take a quiet moment to work on my yukata homework from the local sewing class I recently joined. It’s nothing fancy—just a bit of slow stitching and a fabric I bought using the 500 yen coins I’d been saving for years. But these little moments carry meaning.
We end with a dish I love to make on calm evenings: Aqua Pazza, prepared with fish my husband caught in the Sea of Japan. A little taste of Italy, made in a kominka kitchen.
If you’ve ever wondered what life in a traditional Japanese house really feels like—not the postcard version, but the quiet, lived-in beauty of everyday things—I hope you’ll take a few minutes and join me. I think you’ll find that even in a world where everything seems to be rising in cost, there’s still richness to be found in simplicity.
🎥 Click below to watch the full vlog—and don’t forget to check the video details for that flaky pie crust recipe.