The mean residence time is the time scale for intermediate status between infiltration and runoff and one of the critical factors for understanding runoff response, erosion, and eco-hydrological processes. This research explored a direct method to estimate the mean residence time over existing indirect, isotope tracer method. Spatial and temporal distributions of soil moisture have been monitored for a year with 2-hours monitoring interval. Mean residence time for soil moisture showed apparent increasing tendency to deeper depth and decreasing trend during summer periods, which had intensive rainfall events. The mean residence times obtained from this research showed similar trend to those obtained from other isotope methods, which means the direct method can be an efficient approach to obtain the mean residence time.