Recently I picked up a few books from Arimoto Yoko (有元葉子), a renowned cooking and lifestyle author. What really impresses me is her confidence, refined taste and vitality.
Arimoto has a colorful history working in the lifestyle industry. When she interned for an industrial design studio as a student, she found a set of books by famed kaiseki chef Tsuji Kaichi in the studio library. By soaking in the ryori world and learning what constituted a good Japanese culinary taste, she found her vocation as a chef and lifestyle designer. After years of alternating between working in Van Jacket and editing fashion magazines, and as a housewife, she returned to the workplace at 50. Her current work includes writing for culinary magazine and her own cookbooks, hosting cooking classes, and designing her own brand of kitchen utensils.
Arimoto is very conscious at an early age to cultivate her own taste, instead of relying on 3rd party reviews to tell her what is good. She often emphasizes that your body will signal to you what is good for health, and it’s more trustworthy to heed these signals than to follow food fads. I think developing one’s own criteria becomes even more important in this AI age. In the last decade, people already got too dependent on Yelp, Google Maps reviews and online influencers for where to dine or what to buy. Now with LLMs and chatbots, it becomes even easier to summon “advice” at all our decision points. In this context, Arimoto stands as a stark reminder for what really makes us human. We learn much better by our own experience via our senses, and interacting with other fellow humans.
I still remember when I first traveled to Japan, there was only Tabelog (in Japanese only) in PC and no Google Maps. Later, Tabelog Mobile launched but it was a paid product. Coupling with the fact that wifi was scarce, and it was extremely difficult to buy SIM card as a foreigner at that time, it practically ruled out the possibility of checking reviews on the road. So for the first decade of my travel, I had to solely rely on intuition, picking up the context real time, judging the menu, what I saw inside the restaurant (or photos of ryokans when I was planning a trip), and other nuances to make a call on whether to get in, or what to pick. I did pay some price (monetary and opportunity cost) for bad choices, but they all taught me valuable lessons in choosing a restaurant, hotel or ryokan. Doing this frequently helped to build up my own criteria and decision muscles. Sharpening your senses is like honing a knife, in which no one can do it for you. In fact, it can be a fun experience, as Arimoto posits that it is like awakening our animal instinct in the wild - have nothing but our senses to detect and decide.
Another aspect of her aesthetic pursuit is to make full use of every ingredient, to let it shine. We might think that a renowned chef might be flashing out signature dishes from molecular gastronomy, or at least using expensive ingredients like wagyu or uni. But Arimoto favors the simplest washoku dishes. To her, properly preparing dashi with the right ingredient, and turning out simple, wholesome and elegant dishes is a superior form of sophistication and her type of pride.
The other thing that strikes me is that at 83, Arimoto is still tackling new projects including the opening of her new video channel on everyday cooking. In fact, every job she’ve ever held (apparel design, magazine editor, chef, writer, teacher, industrial designer) was uncharted territory before she stepped into it. She shares that one of her biggest joys is to go into a completely new domain and meet people who will give her all sorts of wild inspirations, to open a brand new path. I can feel her glowing enthusiasm for life by her eyes and the way she talks. I really think that she looks decades younger than her true age due to her love for new challenges, and once she is in it, fully savor what she’s doing.
To me, she is a role model for graceful aging, and a portrayal of the Japanese word おしゃれ (お洒落): stylish and sophisticated.
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