By Jon Stubbington

The sushi chef shouted, throwing out greetings with every plate: irasshaimase for the arrivals and, to the departing, sayonara. Holding court from the centre of a circuit of sushi, he heckled all who came and went.

I sat with my back to the door, watching the colour-coded plates pass in front of me: tuna tightly wrapped in seaweed, salmon strips laid across slabs of sushi rice, fresh sashimi slithering by. I sipped my green tea and watched.

Then I left. Empty.

I ignored the Shinkansen—the bullets—and took the slow train along the coast. In Matsue, I took a boat ride around the castle and, once the sun had set red and languorous across the lagoon, I watched a lantern parade wind its way through the darkness. Lights bobbed and bounced and passed me by.

Above a silent shopping centre, I found an Irish bar and ordered a hamburger; it tasted neither Japanese nor American. Or, for that matter, noticeably Irish.

The temples of Kyoto confused me. They were many and monotonous. Raked gravel gardens gave nothing back: empty and dull. A temple cat stretched out along a walkway, finding glory only in the warmth of the sun.

I walked the trail through Fushimi-Inari alone, the path leading me uphill through trees, between and beneath orange lacquered gates—torii gates—their black inscriptions indecipherable. Within the gates, I found myself inside a tunnel, an illusion, a great orange snake climbing up the mountain. I walked through its insides, from tail to head, as it, in turn, slithered through the forest.

Sitting on the forest floor, I unwrapped a doughnut, carried with me from the city below. As I ate, I listened to the chatter of the tourists and devotees, Japanese and tsurisuto, echoing out of the tunnel as they passed.

They did not know I was there.

~

A cedar-leaf ball hung outside the sake brewery, marking it. Inside, I stared at the bottles, unknowing and uncertain. Eventually, embarrassed, I picked up the second-cheapest bottle.

“O-genki desu ka,” I asked the shopkeeper: How are you?

“Your Japanese,” she replied, “is very good. Much better than my English.” She called for her husband and made me repeat my stuttering sentence. They agreed upon the excellence of my Japanese.

We all agreed to pretend that they were not selling lies, and that I was not buying them.

I paid for my sake and left.

Takayama is a museum, a town preserved in amber, its streets filled with dark wooden merchant houses that reach out from the nineteenth century to touch today. There are no burger bars, no
Irish pubs, no doughnut shops. Only history and tradition and souvenirs.

Low-roofed and overflowing, the shop was dark and unappealing. I nearly didn’t go in. But hunger was picking away at my insides, nagging me, testing me.

“Hida beef: the best beef in the world.” That is what he told me, his voice as dark as his shop. He handed me a steamed bun, inscribed upon its face a Japanese character that I could not read.

It wisped slightly in the air.

I paid him what he asked. I was hungry.

Outside in the street, cupping the bun in its paper wrapping to shield my hands from the heat, I took a careful bite. The bun was soft and my teeth sunk through to release a breath of warm beef. Strips of meat tangled inside and I teased them out carefully, letting the steam escape into the Takayama morning.

Hida beef: the best in the world. I returned and bought a second. The old man did not seem surprised.

That night, I shared the second-cheapest bottle of sake, sitting in a hostel kitchen, getting drunk with people I had never met before. I made sure to tell them where to find the shop with the old man and the steamed buns.

Several times, apparently.

~

From Takayama, I took a bus and then a train, crossing the waist of Honshu on my way south. In Osaka I followed the tracks of the loop line around the city, seeking and finding, now I knew what I was looking for.

I was served takoyaki in a darkened, wood-filled room: slices of octopus, cocooned in batter balls. Abandoning the chopsticks, I let my fingers grow greasy as I dunked and dispatched, crunching through the batter to the soft flesh beneath.

Across the city, I rode an elevator, the building swallowing me as I soared skywards. Doors opened onto a narrow corridor—no windows—lined with cubicles, stretching out until the curve of the building hid them from my view. In each a different offering, counters dividing the served from the servers.

I walked the corridor, watching the people.

Inside a cubicle, I sat and waited as a pancake was assembled; the okonomiyaki growing on the griddle in front of me. I tasted the sweet sauce, the cabbage, the dusting of seaweed over the top.

I travelled on, tasting tempura in unmarked restaurants down darkened streets. We shared oden as a group, sat in a hostel, as rain curtained the windows. There are memories—only slight—of a sake bar in Hiroshima, where the owner played The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and we drank until we knew all the words.

Bento boxes travelled with me as I strode through the streets. Soba noodles hot and cold, with chicken or tofu. Wasabi to enliven the day. Yakitori from a grill.

And eventually, I found myself back where I began, with an irasshaimase to start and a procession of plates. I chose carefully, and then with abandon, accompanying my meal with green tea and the shouts of the sushi chef.

At the end, I laid my chopsticks down, satisfied, and I waited for the waitress to come.

I smiled as she calculated what I owed, counting the plates, measuring their worth.

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