Slow Food, Slow Life — Finding Time to Live Again

Coming for lunch or dinner at Maison Julien
is not really about going to a restaurant.

If we had wanted to create a conventional place,
we would have settled in a city center.
We chose otherwise.

When I opened my first space in Tokyo in 1994,
it was still possible to create something authentic in the city.
In 2024, things are very different.
Cities accelerate, rhythms compress,
and many people gradually drift into the virtual world.

Intensity is sought to erase stress.
Everything must happen faster and faster.
People say they have no time,
forgetting that time belongs to them,
and that slowing down is still a choice.

Life, however, has its own pace.

Here in Miyazu, that choice still exists.
Rhythms are not uniform; they coexist.
One can walk, cook, talk, remain silent
without constantly checking the clock.

That is what we offer:
a simple pause,
a space where people meet freely, without urgency.

A few years ago, while traveling in Morocco,
we were anxiously waiting for a minibus to take us to the airport.
It was late, and we were visibly worried.
A street vendor, amused by our impatience, said:
“Don’t rush so much.
We will all end up at the cemetery eventually.
Why hurry?”

That sentence has stayed with us.

At Maison Julien,
you don’t come to save time.
You come to find it again.