Before my first bowl of Shiro tonkotsu from Ichiraku, I had never known the taste of authentic Japanese ramen. Or any kind of ramen that took longer than five minutes to prepare and whose entire flavor profile wasn’t sealed in a plastic seasoning packet. So, if you’re looking for that kind of food review, you might be disappointed to find nothing of the sort in this write-up.
What you will find instead is an image of intertwined hands, of teenagers folding over one another like taffy in the cramped space afforded by the bottom bunk of a double-decker. In the tropical afternoon heat, my roommates and I would make a sport out of it—squeezing into a single-bed space just to see if we could. Just to test the bounds of nearness which is to say that we were, in essence, adjusting the room to make room for each other. Back then, we had all the time in the world. Now, we’re lucky if we see each other once a year.
You know how it goes. The lives of adults are so often strewn with stories just-beginning, concluded, and always-awaiting that this one may seem all too familiar.
When the pandemic unleashed itself onto the world, it altered our way of life, challenged the very notion of time and certainty. Some of us entered it as burgeoning adolescents and came out of the other end with the word “FULL-BLOWN ADULT” stamped across our foreheads.
But maybe, if I somehow knew that things were going to end when they did, I would be so much better at letting it all go.
I am now twenty-three. My roommates moved out of the dorms a long time ago. Whenever I think about how people get from one point of their lives to another, no clear answer comes to mind. But when in doubt, they say, always follow your nose.
Whenever I’m in Dumaguete, I find myself gravitating towards that noodle shop. Tantanmen. Spicy. With a side of cha-shu or tuna onigiri. I text my friend to let her know that I’m here and that I’ll be waiting. At the back of the restaurant, a phone chimes. Someone looks up, and I am greeted by a bright, familiar smile.
Two orders please.
Last year, when I came to visit the dormitory that became home to some eighty students, the walls were still painted with the same off-white shade. The tiles hadn’t changed one bit and a section of the upstairs floor still creaked under the weight of one’s step. Our study tables, where more gossip than studying occurred, remained as though glued to the very spot where we once left them.
It never happens the way it does in the movies, does it?
The announcement to end the semester prematurely in light of COVID-19 came at noon. That day, none of us lingered by the doorframe dramatically. We never even got to say our proper goodbyes. In our heads, we thought we were coming back. Of course, that never happened. Or, at least, we didn’t come back the same way.
That chapter of our lives ended the way it always does: over a nondescript lunch.
When I replay the event in my head, I recall a line I wrote in an older article—how each time we remember, we move away from the truth of the memory. But maybe, if I somehow knew that things were going to end when they did, I would be so much better at letting it all go.
The word “nostalgia” comes from two Greek terms, nostos (return) and algos (pain). It was coined by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer as a way of describing the symptoms displayed by Swiss mercenaries in the service of European monarchs.
Nostalgia is defined as suffering over the inability to return home.
To eat is an exercise of trust. To know the smell of something is to know a bit about its origins, its contents. You have to get real close in order to experience these things—close enough that they end up stirring something inside you.
But there’s a trick to it, you see. I close my eyes and my memories return to me in a steaming bowl, broth thickened and rich to the bone. According to science, there are strong connections between the olfactory bulb and the amygdala, a center of the brain involved in emotional learning—the reason why our sense of taste and smell is so closely tied to our memories.
Back in the old days, when our ancestors had to hunt and forage for sustenance, every meal was a gamble. Wild berries could very well be poisonous. Meat could turn bad overnight. So we developed a way to encode information into our senses and this biological mechanism evolved as a means of survival.
There’s something intimate and primal about how we experience both food and memory.
To eat is an exercise of trust. To know the smell of something is to know a bit about its origins, its contents. You have to get real close in order to experience these things—close enough that they end up stirring something inside you.
I make it a point to eat at Ichiraku whenever I’m in Dumaguete. It has become something of a tradition, a way of preserving the remnants of an old life so dearly held. As you get older, you become more intentional with things like these—things you carry with you throughout your life.
We don’t really get to choose our memories. That is to say, we don’t always have control over which parts we get to keep or when or how they come back to us. Nevertheless, we are buoyed through life by their existence. Both food and memory are sustenance. They are the ties that bind.
We move forward because time demands it but our past is always trailing closely behind—in every spoonful or whiff of garlic. Underneath every umami hit and warm, familiar flavor.
