An introduction to omakase - traveling without expectations

An introduction to omakase – traveling without expectations

November 21, 2021

2 minute read

I travel a lot. A lot a lot. Mostly for business. Frequently for some amazing hike somewhere around the world or while spending time with my family. But the red thread through my travel is omakase – the art of letting go of expectations. I strongly believe that if you travel with an open mind, when you leave your expectations at home, you experience more. That is the thinking behind this blog, omakas.es.

I travel a lot. A lot a lot (although a bit less because of COVID and some personal circumstances). Mostly for business. Frequently for some amazing hike somewhere around the world or while spending time with my family. But the red thread through my travel is omakase – the art of letting go of expectations. I strongly believe that if you travel with an open mind, when you leave your expectations at home, you experience more. That is the thinking behind this blog, omakas.es.

On the habit of omakase

The Japanese habit of omakase (お任せ) when you’re ordering at a restaurant pretty much means, “I’ll leave it up to you”, inviting the chef to be innovative and surprising in the selection of dishes. I try to do it in every city I visit, and apply the idea behind to everything between how I pick my runs, how I pick my food, how I plan activities with my kids, how I explore cities and how I travel in general.

If you apply this, you experience more. You are more likely to stumble upon an amazing part of the city that wasn’t mentioned in the Lonely Planet. You are more likely to meet new people, to have the staff in your restaurant pick your food or to have a hipster local point you to the best possible bars and restaurants.

Or ot be more specific: You are more likely to end up drinking tea with Bedouins in the desert, to do the haka with Maori in New Zealand, end up bar crawling with people you never met in Tokyo, sharing life stories with drunk Russian millionaires in London and my other amazing travel memores.

Why this website, omakas.es

I had kept these stories to myself. But I needed to have a tool that was able to help me to update information quickly on the go. I wanted to be able to post notes, stories, thoughts and ideas of my travels as well keep a log for myself of packing lists and experiences. Rather than keeping these for myself in Evernote of another tool, it made total sense to share these notes with the world. I recently dedicated a post on why I started blogging (again).

And so that became omakases. A place to share my hikes or runs, my preparations for hikes, my packing lists, my travel hacks, my quirks and routines, my reviews of hotels or gear.