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Last week, I went to the “Restaurant on the Sea” in Teshima, Kagawa Prefecture, to check it after one year. The construction was completed in the last year’s summer, and one year has passed quickly. The sky was gray, but the red of the concrete base and the blue of the sea, added to the green of the clovers that now cover the front space, has created a nice contrast.

Since the first step of this project, the direction of the construction side was in the hands of Kazutaka Sato, of Naikai Archit., who passed away the last spring. I believe the construction was completed also thanks to his efforts as a working man. He was really a man to rely on, strict and accurate at work, and capable to understand both the designers and the clients. The Teshima Yokou Kan, by the designer Yuko Nagayama, was completed about the same time of this restaurant, and the ceremony for the finishing of the construction became a sort of opening ceremony for the restaurant. That day, on the terrace of the restaurant, with the people who worked together and the owner, I drank with Mr. Sato showing his reassuring smile: I recollected it as it was just happened a few days ago.



A little before, we had dinner together when we stayed at “Il Vento White Dormitory” (2011) in Teshima, where he was the responsible for the construction of this project as well, and then he told me about his feelings as a father of a young girl. Because I will be in his same condition soon, for me that talk is deeply impressed in my memory.




This time, the check was slightly different from the usual. Watching the Seto Inland Sea, quiet as it was one year ago, I recollected things about that time, and I felt the transience and the marvel of the people. I worked with him for just three years, a short time, but it was a privilege for me. Thank you very much Mr. Sato.