Koto: Shiranai Koto Shiritai

Now whisper to yourself: “I don’t know everything about you. And I want to.”

But the phrase shiranai koto, shiritai koto reframes that admission. It turns ignorance from a shameful void into a garden waiting to be planted. I stumbled across this phrase in a tiny, dust-scented bookstore in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo. I was flipping through a used essay collection by a photographer named Hideko Nakajima. She wasn’t famous. Her book was about photographing the same river for five years.

We learn just enough to get by. We know the route to work, so we stop seeing the buildings. We know how to brew coffee, so we stop smelling the beans. We know our partner’s habits, so we stop asking them questions. shiranai koto shiritai koto

When you actively seek out what you don’t know, you get comfortable with not knowing. You stop pretending. And that is freedom. The anxious grip of needing to be the expert loosens. You can say, “I don’t know—but I’d like to find out.” That sentence is a key to every locked door. But Isn’t This Just… Being Curious? Yes. And no.

This is not about productivity. It’s not about winning trivia night or impressing a professor. It is about restoring a sense of wonder to the ordinary. Here’s the problem most of us face. We are born curious. An infant will stare at a ceiling fan for twenty minutes like it’s a revelation from the gods. But somewhere between school, work, bills, and the endless scroll of social media, we trade curiosity for competence. Now whisper to yourself: “I don’t know everything

Let that be your whisper. Let that be your way. Do you have a “shiranai koto” that recently turned into a “shiritai koto”? I’d love to hear it. Drop it in the comments—because your unknown thing might be exactly what I need to wonder about next.

That “oh”—that small, quiet exclamation of wonder—is the heart of it. Stop reading for ten seconds. Look around you. Find one object you have seen a hundred times. A lamp. A coffee mug. A crack in the wall. I stumbled across this phrase in a tiny,

Shiritai koto (I want to know you—not your data, not your resume, but your living, breathing, wondering self).