Tucked into a quiet residential street in Matsumoto, Nagano, sits Yamasei—an unagi restaurant of unhurried atmosphere and particular warmth. Step through the noren curtain and you're met with the fragrance of char and glaze, and a stillness that feels deliberately maintained. That space is the work of Keisuke Tominaga, known to those around him as Tomi-san. He came to Matsumoto originally in pursuit of a different craft entirely—furniture-making—and has since put down roots here, building a life around food, people, and the slow accumulation of things that matter.

Changing and accumulating. At first glance, these two ideas seem to pull in opposite directions. Yet they form the quiet axis around which we continue to make things at NICENESS. What endures is not always what refuses to change. Sometimes the truest path is one shaped by ongoing transformation—through encounter, through time, through the gradual layering of experience.

"Right now isn't perfect." Tomi-san says this without resignation. It's a posture of perpetual openness—the willingness to see clearly from a distance, and to change when change is needed. That is not the same as lacking conviction. It is, in fact, the opposite: a confidence deep enough to remain in motion, accumulating weight not through rigidity, but through the quiet passage of time and the people met along the way.

We have tried, in our own way, to work from a similar place—to put accumulated time and texture into each garment. Not over-deciding. Not over-constraining. But never cutting corners. We believe it is beyond that threshold that something genuinely lasting begins to form. To keep changing, we keep accumulating. In pursuit of something that outlasts its moment, we keep moving our hands.

This conversation with Tomi-san reminded us—quietly, and with some clarity—of the posture we want to hold.

NN：To begin—what are the values or principles you hold closest in your own work?

Tomi-san：Hmm. Changing. Being able to change. The idea of not being able to change is something I find genuinely uncomfortable. And thinking that right now is already perfect—that's the thing I find most unsettling of all. Of course I have my own aesthetic, my preferences, the things I care about. But I don't think any of that is absolute. Plenty of restaurants operate with a very fixed identity—"this is what we are, this is what we do." That kind of clarity has its own appeal, and there's something genuinely cool about it. But I want to stay as neutral as possible. To always have the lightness to change quickly, the moment something feels necessary. And for that, I think humor is essential.

NN：You're in hospitality now, but I've heard that connecting with people didn't come easily to you.

Tomi-san：In high school, you spend a lot of energy trying to figure out what kind of person you are, right? Having a clear character made it easier to belong somewhere. But I was never good at that—I couldn't quite fit. I barely had any friends. Well into my twenties, I had this idea that I could just live without much human contact at all. But then I met the master at the unagi restaurant where I trained, and that changed everything. He was an extraordinarily disciplined person—not just about the food, but about thinking deeply, constantly, about how to make people genuinely happy. At first I had no idea what to do with that. Then gradually, something shifted. I thought: this is something remarkable.

NN：Before food, you came to Matsumoto hoping to become a furniture maker.

Tomi-san：That's right. I was drawn to the craftsmen who made Matsumoto mingei furniture. I thought: if I make things with my hands, I can live without talking to anyone. (laughs) At the time, I wanted to be close to objects, not to people. I imagined a life of quiet, solitary making—head down, hands moving, day after day. But then some things shifted in my personal life and I ended up moving to Tokyo, without a job lined up. I was just wandering around the city one day when I happened to pass an unagi restaurant with a help-wanted sign. So I knocked on the door.

NN：Did you have any cooking experience?

Tomi-san：None at all. Not even part-time work in food. But I liked cooking—my mother was a good cook, and I'd always enjoyed both eating and making things. I was around twenty-eight, which meant I wasn't exactly starting young. Something like traditional Japanese cuisine or sushi felt like too steep a learning curve at that stage. I thought, with unagi, maybe it's just a matter of splitting and grilling. (laughs) And there was also the fact that unlike sushi restaurants, an unagi place didn't seem to require that much counter-side conversation with customers.

NN：How do you think about the idea of distinctiveness—having something that's genuinely your own?

Tomi-san：I don't think about it as something to consciously develop or project. If anything, I try not to defer to convention—to the default assumption of "well, this is how it's done." There are moments when the things everyone takes for granted start to feel slightly off to me. Why is what's considered wrong actually wrong? The gap between what I find interesting and what the world assumes—I think that gap is what becomes distinctiveness. With the way I grill unagi, for instance: the master never actually taught me his technique, so I had no choice but to work it out myself. That process led to something that's quite different from other restaurants—a much stronger char on the outside, while the inside stays soft and yielding. I love that contrast. Not just with unagi—I'm drawn to contrast in almost everything. Objects, people, situations.

NN：Do you use social media to reach new customers?

Tomi-san：I tried for a while. But I think I'm done with it. I still look at things occasionally, but the quality of false information—of convincing fakes—has gotten very high. It's harder to trust what you find there. And more than that: I want the people who are already here to feel genuinely at ease. If I put things out there indiscriminately and the numbers grow, the people I actually care most about might start to feel like they can't get in. That's not something I want.

NN：Do you hope to pass your work—your way of seeing—on to someone else?

Tomi-san：Hmm. I don't think I'm attached to the idea of "keeping the restaurant going." Food disappears the moment it's eaten. In some part of me, there's always been a pull toward making something physical—furniture, a painting, something that remains as an object. Food is gone in an instant, but a made thing persists across time. That persistence is remarkable, when you think about it. What's good about making things with your hands, I think, is precisely that—the handedness of it. Lately I've been really absorbed in building a garden. Moving my hands, making something with texture, and knowing it will stay. There's value in that for me. So at some point, I want to make things again. Maybe furniture. Maybe something with soil.

NN：Your approach seems very fluid, and yet the core of it feels remarkably consistent.

Tomi-san：In the end, it really comes down to: I only want to do things I enjoy. (laughs) The things that are inefficient, inconvenient, labor-intensive—those are often where the real interest lies. In an age when everyone is optimizing, doing something the slow way, on purpose, is my version of enjoyment. A day where one or two close friends come to eat, and then I get to make something—that's the day I'm after. The difficult, inefficient things. I plan to keep doing those for a long time.