In Japan, I went back to being a student.

Japan might be the most I've ever learned in one country. I came to cook, and mostly ended up as a student.

The lesson I keep coming back to came from a Japanese grandmother who taught me to make onigiri by hand. No tricks, no equipment, just the right pressure and a lifetime of doing it. It was one of my favorite hours of the whole trip.

From there it kept going. I visited a hundred-and-sixty-nine-year-old sake brewery and watched them make it the old way, the koji, the tanks, the cold rooms that haven't changed in generations. I spent a day out in the countryside making pottery and tasting wild boar for the first time. I found a ramen stand in Tokyo so small you'd walk right past it, and ate one of the best bowls of my life standing up.

That's the thing about Japan. It puts the grandmother and the Michelin room in the same country and treats them like they matter exactly the same amount. The care is identical. That's what I want to carry into Elizabeth.