Enough
Hakone, Japan. Last night of the trip. May 2026.
The train had already shut down for the night. We stood on the platform in Hakone, last night of the trip, no clear idea if the place we'd found online was a restaurant, an event space, or just some guy's house.
So we jumped the tracks. Climbed the ladder up the other side of the station and started walking.
It was straight uphill. Felt like a mile, no idea how long it actually was. Mount Fuji was back there somewhere behind the clouds. All we had to go on was a website and a photo of an older gentleman who looked like a legendary chef and an even better character. We weren't sure he was open. We weren't sure he wanted us.
When we'd tried to book, the reply came back in broken translation: "Please make your reservation via Google Maps! We are not a pizza place!"
He wrote back again. "We are not a pizza place. Confirmed for 6:30."
We got to the top and found one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever stood in. Vaulted timber ceiling. Greenery hanging from the beams. Every light on. And completely empty.
One man inside. He opened the door, looked a little annoyed, and spoke only Japanese. We said we had a reservation. He said no. We stood there in the doorway for five minutes getting nowhere, four Americans and one Italian-trained Japanese chef, none of us able to find a single shared word.
Then I saw the grand piano sitting in the middle of all that open space.
I pulled out a translation app and typed: "We're musicians from Nashville. Can we play your piano?"
He read it. Looked up. Said one word.
"Play."
Lucky for us, our buddy Ben is a Grammy-nominated songwriter and classical musician. He sat down and asked what the man wanted to hear.
The man said, "Oh Holy Night." (Interesting choice... lol)
Ben played it instantly from memory. And this old man walked over to the piano, lifted the lid, propped it open with the stick, and started slowly walking the room while the music filled it. We just stood there awkwardly, no idea what was happening to us.
When the song ended, he walked over to us.
"Sit. Sit down at the table."
Four hours
What followed was the most magical evening of our entire trip. Maybe one of the best evenings I've had in years.
There was no menu. We couldn't order anything. We couldn't even really speak the same language. He just started cooking. Course after course. He just kept bringing things and going back to cook more. An Italian meal in the mountains of Japan, made by a man who spent his whole life perfecting it.
We pieced the story together later. His name is Toshi Namiki-san. He's 83. He spent his whole life building some of the most famous pizza spots in Tokyo. The "we are not a pizza place" thing wasn't him being difficult. It was him being protective. Tourists fly in, want a quick pie, snap a photo, leave. He didn't build this place on a hill for that. He built it to host. To cook for people who'd actually sit down.
Halfway through the night, he asked what we did. Before we could answer, he just started to share...
He told us his story. He'd been a jockey. Then he became one of Tokyo's most famous pizza makers. Spent decades running restaurants. Tourists from all over the world came for his pizza. Americans especially. They'd show up, eat a quick pizza, and leave. Or complain it wasn't fast enough.
He got tired of it. He'd had enough.
He said: I spent my life as a jockey, then making the best pizza in Tokyo. Until one day, after I had made enough money, I decided I'd had enough.
He took every dollar he had and built this place. It's his home. And his place to host. No menus. No choices. No rush. You get what he makes. You sit at his table. You stay as long as he wants you to.
Then he said a word that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
Enough.
He repeated it. There's too much care about money, more technology, more AI (oh he hated AI), but we have enough. I have enough.
He said it again, with a little disdain in his voice. At some point, there's just too much. Too much of everything. I can't keep up with anything.
Enough.
I haven't been able to get his voice out of my head. I think enough is going to be my word for 2026.
The wall
5 weeks later, sitting back in Nashville. 9:37 a.m.
I'm sitting at Joelton Hardware this morning. A local coffee shop in Nashville, tucked inside an actual hardware store. I built a little agent on Convos that monitors my favorite writers and websites so I don't have to. It delivers me a personalized newspaper every morning. No algorithm. No feed. Just the stuff I actually want to read.
This morning it sent me a Seth Godin post titled "The End of the Content Shortage." It's 3 months old, but it brought me right back to that table in Hakone. He wrote:
"For generations, content has created the demand for more content. A few movies increased our desire to watch more movies. AM radio created the demand for FM, which sold more records, and then Napster magnified our desire for even more music. Until we hit the wall of enough. The ennui of infinite content is reversing our spiraling desire for more of it."
That's the word. The same word. A pizza maker in the mountains of Japan and a marketing thinker in New York arrived at the same place.
Enough. Everyone has had enough. Which makes me think something's about to change.
I think about this constantly now. Not just about content. About everything. I don't want to spend my time browsing algorithms trying to find things. I don't want more content. I don't want more noise. I don't want another app, another feed, another notification. I've had enough. We've all had enough. It's exhausting trying to keep up with a rate of change that probably isn't good for any human.
And I think that's what we're all feeling, even if we don't have the word for it yet. The infinite scroll isn't exciting anymore. It's exhausting. The AI that generates more content on demand for an audience of one isn't the answer. More isn't the answer. It never was.
Mr. Namiki-san figured this out before the rest of us. He didn't optimize for more customers. He didn't scale. He built one room. One table. One meal. And he made it perfect.
A different future we can build
That night changed how I think about what we're making and the future I want to help build.
What if we build technology that helps us use technology less? Technology should work for us, not make us use it more.
It should give us back our time, our attention, and our lives. Our real lives. The one with pianos, conversations, connection, and a moment sitting together playing games, eating fantastic food, and sharing stories. Or even better, Ben showing us some new magic tricks he learned this week.
In a world where everyone is making more slop, what if the secret was to help us do more so we can get off our devices?
What good is infinite intelligence if it doesn't come with infinite connection? Can't think of anything worse than being super intelligent and lonely.
Mr. Namiki-san didn't need a bigger restaurant. He needed a smaller one. One where the door only opens when the piano plays. He'd had enough. He figured it out before most of us.
I keep coming back to that moment. Four people at a wooden table in an empty room in Hakone. He couldn't speak our language. We couldn't speak his. He fed us anyway, played us out on a piano he'd never planned to share, and taught us the most important word either of us knows.
Enough.
Reservation confirmed, and he made us the most incredible pizza... You just can't ask for it, you have to stay for the entire evening, and one pizza is enough.
Mr. Toshi Namiki-san runs Toto' Sapore in Hakone, Japan. If you go, don't ask for pizza. Play the piano. It's truly special.