Preface – Since this is part of larger work, I thought it might be helpful to include some background information.  The story begins in 1976 when I join the Unification Church and proceeds through marriage to my Japanese wife, Ryoko, in a mass wedding in Madison Square Garden in 1982.  In 1988 I started work in a Japanese restaurant as a dishwasher, and that is where The Course of a Sushi Chef begins.  It was always my dream to open my own restaurant, and that dream became a reality in 1997, when Akai Hana opened.  Finally, to any who recognize themselves and are offended by my portrayal of events, I am truly sorry.  My own Mother nearly disowned me over something I wrote once.

Bob 

THE COURSE OF A SUSHI CHEF

By Bob Huneycutt

AUGUST MOON - It is 1988 and my life is about to get a lot more complicated.  Ryoko, her belly swelling with our first child, stays behind in Manhattan while I transfer to Atlanta to begin work in the August Moon Restaurant.  The manager, Ishi-san, takes an apprehensive look at me and ushers me to the dish-wash room.  A sixteen-year old kid shows me how to operate the dishwashing machine and recommends that I invest in some rubber boots as he throws his apron in the linen basket, leaving me with a tall stack of plates and racks of dirty glasses. 

            August Moon is a teppanyaki joint where they cook at the tables, and it gets smoky.  Six of the big grills sit in a dark, greasy room off to the left, and to the right are some stained pine tables and a long sushi bar along one whole side.  The hibachi chefs are all Korean, but in a pinch, Ishi-san can put on a show, throwing shrimp and setting grease fires, although he prefers to stay behind the sushi bar. 

            The owner of August Moon is Mr. Hoshino, a Korean man who grew up in Japan, and who owns five restaurants scattered about the southeast, but this is his only steakhouse.  Teppanyaki, strictly speaking, is not a traditional Japanese cuisine, but a kind of derivation of the famous okinomiyaki shops in Osaka where you can cook your own seafood pancakes at table grills, teppan being the Japanese rendering of ‘tin pan’, and yaki meaning grilled.  But the simple cafes in Osaka bear no resemblance to the gaudy, overblown theater made famous by chains like Benihana, where the rice is cooked in a big pile on the grill and the chicken and beef is sliced staccato-style amid the smoke and the grease with food flying and the hibachi chef reciting stale jokes.

            Nonetheless, hibachi cooking is still popular in 1988, and though the area of Doraville where August Moon is situated is a little dilapidated, our customers, mostly regulars, still get a smile on their face as they come through the front door.       

Washing dishes suits me fine.  I don’t have to think about the work at all, leaving my mind free to wander.  After one month of mindless freedom, Ishi-san asks me to join the wait staff; the elite group that functions as the smiling face of the restaurant.  In most restaurants, the servers are among the highest-paid employees, because of tips.  They serve as liaison between the customers and the kitchen, operating under pressure from both sides, but showing a calm exterior.  The staff at August Moon is capable, friendly and diverse: there are several Malaysian students, a pretty Taiwanese girl and her boyfriend and two Korean girls.  I am the lone white guy.  One of the Korean girls is Banya, who takes me under her wing and shows me the fine points of waiting tables.

Everyone should have the experience, once in their life, of waiting tables, because you can never mistreat a waitress after standing in her slip-resistant black shoes.  It is theatre which must be experienced to be appreciated to work under pressure in the intense heat of the kitchen and the fast pace of the dining room, holding in one’s mind a list of tables and needs and traveling back and forth with various heavy and obtuse loads, and still come out smiling.  If only the rude ticket agent and unhelpful city workers had honed their customer service skills in the heat of a busy restaurant.  Banya imparts to me the patience and empathy of a good server.

Banya has a strong nature, as do many Koreans.  If I was to compare the character of Japanese people with Koreans, I would say the Japanese are organized, emphasize the public benefit and discourage individualism.  Koreans, on the other hand, are somewhat more independent, fiercely loyal, and extremely sacrificial.  They are a hot-blooded people who tend to like spicy food, and Banya is no exception.

Here at August Moon we pool the tips, which is a little different from most places; we put all the tips together and then divide them up equally so that each server makes the same amount.  The advantage of this is that it provides a real incentive to help one another, to run someone else’s food to the table and bus each other’s tables.  The disadvantage, and what makes every good server fume, is when one person doesn’t pull his weight, or worse, hides some tips.  This often leads to bad feelings among the staff, especially since tips here are kind of lousy, and turnover is high. 

One day I have cause to wonder if Ishi-san has verified his staff’s legal status.  A somber gray man parks himself at a table near the front entrance and asks to see everyone’s identification.  He is from the Immigration Office.  I sit down across the table from him and hold out my license.  Anyone who’s not American, he says with a glare.  While I get up and walk away, several waiters disappear out the back door of the restaurant.  Fortunately this occurs near the end of the lunch rush, and I finish the shift as the sole waiter. 

There is an older Japanese woman who serves as hostess and cashier.  She is a favorite with the customers but she is tired of the restaurant business and ready to retire.  Ishi-san decides to groom me as her replacement.  She is a hard worker and polite to a fault, but she is deeply suspicious of anything related to the Unification Movement.  Me, I’m tired of living like a secret agent and so I try to be open about my church involvement; on the other hand, I refrain from proselytizing in the work environment.

There is a precedent for this.  The story that is often told in Unification circles is that Reverend Moon never talked about his providential calling when he was in prison in North Korea.  To do so would have meant almost certain torture, as if life in a communist death camp wasn’t brutal enough already.  Despite his silence, other prisoners were drawn to him, sometimes by a message communicated in a dream, and he gained disciples in the prison without witnessing.  Also he shared the meager rations he was given, so we often say that the most powerful witness is not what you say, but how you live.

In December I fly to New York to be with Ryoko, the delivery being imminent.  Our room high in the New Yorker is small and empty, and one night after midnight, her water breaks.  She takes a shower while I take the elevator downstairs to hail a cab.  The wind blows snow in my face.  By the time Ryoko makes it downstairs, I am waiting with the taxi.  We drive across mid-town to the Beth Israel Hospital.  Our driver complains about the one-way streets; the best he can do is to drop us off behind the hospital, with a half-block of snow-covered grass to trudge across.  Every few steps Ryoko must stop for a hard contraction.  The streets are deserted and the lights of the hospital in the distance are the only signs of life in the sleeping city.  Our footprints in the snow trace back to the curb where we were let go.  Ryoko doesn’t speak at all, but just pushes forward when she is able to move at all.  We reach the back door and are horrified to find it locked tight.  She looks at me in desperation.  Coming soon, she says.

I bang on the door.  There is a security guard just inside.  She’s having a baby, I yell.  He grapples with a large ring of keys and unlocks the massive door, holding it open as Ryoko climbs the last few steps.  Inside, a nurse pulls up with a wheelchair. 

She whisks Ryoko off and I get us registered and then sit down in the waiting room.  I decide to give them a few minutes to get settled in before I ask to join my wife.  I almost wait too long.

They usher me into the room where Ryoko lies in a special bed with stirrups, hooked up to a monitor that measures the contractions.  They are getting stronger.  The team that is here is a doctor and three nurses.  I quickly discover how totally obtrusive a husband is at a birth.  I am not sure what my function is, but the team and my wife are occupied and ignore me.  The final pains of birth are dramatic and draining, and then as the head pops out, followed by a healthy baby boy, my response is not what I expect and I cry to welcome Samuel to our world.  One of the nurses asks if I need to sit down and I guess I must have turned rather pale.  Then all of the attention shifts to Sam and he is a perfect, tiny boy, complete in every way.  He cries and takes the breast and sleeps his first sleep.  Everyone is tired and I am sent home before daybreak. 

Two days later I fly back to Atlanta; Ryoko will join me when Sam is old enough to fly, for they say that a newborn’s ears are too sensitive to take an airplane.  Back at the August Moon, I move to the front of the house where my responsibilities include seating customers, alerting their server and, at the conclusion of their pleasant dining experience, accepting their money.  Occasionally things do go awry, and I am expected to handle complaints, deflect criticism, absorb blame and otherwise keep the peace.  And I will become adept at it over the course of time, but I am probably inadequately sympathetic the first time a businessman leans over me and shares that his companion found shards of glass in his salad.  I assure him the gentleman’s meal is on the house, but this unhappy salesman expects the entire party’s dinner to be complimentary.  I balk.  These are pushy guys and it is in their nature to push their advantage.  I think I’m being reasonable, Ishi-san is backing me up, and I resist them to the extent that their escalating behavior makes me wonder if this showdown will require a call to the police.  It does not, just some bitter feelings all round and a profound relief when they finally leave.  And although I will need to learn to be more generous, it is a fact of life in the restaurant business that there will always be a small minority of customers that insist on acting like jerks. 

They are the exception.  Most of our customers are regulars; Ishi-san knows them by name and they are more like friends who are just visiting and grab a bite because it is convenient.  They sit at the sushi bar and marvel at the expertise of the sushi chefs.  A good sushi chef is an artist.  His blade is razor sharp; he can make pieces of sushi in seconds and fill a wooden plate with fish as colorful as a flower arrangement.  But creating sushi is a labor-intensive process and, when it gets busy, delays are inevitable.  As we like to say, this is not fast food.  My unpleasant job is to let customers know when their food is going to be late.  Then again, to co-ordinate the cook- times between the hibachi chefs, the kitchen and the sushi bar is an ongoing challenge, and, during the peak times, a downright nightmare.  We do the best we can.

Eventually Ryoko and Sam, all eight to ten squealing pounds of him, join me down south.  Mr. Hoshino has purchased a big cedar-sided building consisting of four identical townhouses.  We snare the first one, essentially an empty shell since we have no furniture other than a dorm-size fridge, a futon and a card table with the legs cut short so we can sit on the floor oriental- style.  Ishi-san’s family takes the townhouse next-door; the next by the Japanese brothers and the last one is rented out.  The immediate benefit for me of having Ryoko nearby is that she can translate for me the impassioned discussions of the August Moon staff about the daily functions of the restaurant.  Further, she has an inside track to my co-worker’s honest feelings through their wives, including Mrs. Hoshino, through whom I gain insight into the big boss himself. 

            Mr. Hoshino takes me into his confidence.  He is a business visionary who spends long days driving the endless streets of Atlanta searching for prime locations for new restaurants.  When he visits August Moon, he rakes the side yard, picks up trash in the parking lot, and attends the chores that seldom get done.  He imparts guidelines to Ishi-san, who is happiest when Hoshino is out of town.  Since he is Korean, he doesn’t align himself with the Japanese members, but seems genuinely interested in my opinion.  His own ideas go unexpressed, and when he decides something, he moves at once and alone.

            For their part, the Japanese members are glad to have me working in the front, first of all because English is my first language and because I’m a church member and they can trust me.  Ishi-san and I share a love for music and he turns me on to contemporary Japanese pop.  Some of the Japanese brothers have found the best local fishing spot, and they share with me their secret.  Driving north from Atlanta, I can drop a line in the Chattahoochee River just below the dam.  The trout are plentiful here, and there is no better fishing than what a good size trout will give and no better eating among freshwater fish. 

When I joined the church, I left my guitar behind in San Francisco, and now I realize how much I miss it.  I purchase an old, dusty Epiphone with a slightly warped neck in a pawnshop for a hundred twenty bucks.  Strumming it brings back that old familiar feeling, and I still remember all those old songs, blues mostly: Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.  Melissa.  Stormy Monday.  After a long day of dealing with demanding customers, there is a catharsis in just picking up my guitar and hitting a chord, or bending a note.  Singing a ballad.  Dishwasher blues.

            I embrace my new home and mission, and it is here that I begin to formulate a plan, really just a dream at this point, of opening my own restaurant.  It is a doubtful dream, punctuated by: I don’t know how, and I don’t know when.  But it is a spark that just needs a little dry kindling to ignite.  There are various steps along the way, and the next step is when Mr. Hoshino decides to transfer me to Nashville, Tennessee to run the front of his most successful restaurant, an expansive place frequented by country music stars, called Benkay.  Well yes, country music stars do like Japanese food.  But they don’t advertise it.  And though I am familiar with the rumor that on a record studio bathroom wall there is graffiti that says, Dwight Yoakum eats sushi, I think that most of these famous people are proud of being cultured and cosmopolitan.  Off-stage.

BENKAY- I become star-struck in Nashville.  This is Music City, and I watch country music videos on television to identify people I see at the sushi bar every week.  They are almost universally approachable and personable.  Since I too am an aspiring musician, there is common ground, but then, in Nashville, every shoe salesman and window-washer is in the music business.

            Roy Clark.  Patty Loveless.  Rodney Crowell.  Lynn Anderson.  Bela Fleck.  Rita Coolidge.  I see them all dipping raw fish in soy sauce and eating rice with chopsticks.  Amy Grant drifts in, beautiful and sociable.  When she learns my name, she calls me on the phone: Bob, this is Amy, can I make a takeout order?  That was my closest brush with fame.  Suzy Boggus, I inadvertently brush up against her breast.  One of the Bellamy Brothers, (hit song: If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body, Would You Hold It Against Me), comes in and says he forgot his wallet, so I tell him take care of it next time.  I remember one night when a popular musician is leaving Benkay and a group of musicians turn to watch him go.  His friend, enjoying the moment, points and yells, it’s him, it’s him, it’s Stevie Winwood.   Janis Ian, Holly Dunn, Lily Tomlin, Paul Overstreet. 

            Our second child is born in Nashville, a daughter.  Mr. Hoshino says, a son, a daughter, perfect.

            To summarize what I learn in the year and some-odd months I spend in Nashville: there is tangible benefit in remembering people’s names, taking interest in their personal lives, and striving to dislike no one.  And while I’m not an outgoing person, I can learn to tolerate just about anybody.  I find that a smile goes a long way to breaking down resistance.  I said a smile goes a long way to breaking down resistance.  It is a truth that bears reiteration, and saves my butt many a time when the operations come unglued.  I have no assurance that Susie the waitress will show up for work today, but we’ll serve lunch in either case, and keeping a positive outlook, not just a frozen smile, might make a customer’s experience a little more pleasant, despite the possibility that they may have to wait a little longer than usual.  We just do our best.  What I learn is integral for survival in the service industry.  Still I carry this dream, the spark that will not die, of holding the key to my own restaurant, a sushi bar, of course, for sushi is riding a wave of popularity that is practically a tsunami.  Toward that end I request that Mr. Hoshino let me experience the other dimension of restaurant work.  I ask to work in the very guts of the restaurant, send me to the kitchen.  I crave the noise, the heat, and the vitality of the kitchen.  I want to experience the sinks, fryers and grills, the walk-in cooler and the serving line.  Vegetables getting sliced and sectioned, shrimp thawing, beef and chicken covered in sweet teriyaki sauce, fish broth simmering on the stove.  Mr. Hoshino accommodates me; to the kitchen I will go.

SAKURA - This requires another transfer, we’re used to it, and this time four of us are transferring.  In Alabama is the smallest of Mr. Hoshino’s acquisitions, the first sushi bar in Huntsville launched before Huntsville even knew what sushi is.  This little diversion is Sakura.  Sakura means cherry blossom, which conjures images of spring and new life.  In reality, this operation is sometimes closer to a slime hole.  But even the beautiful water lily thrives in the mud.

            The manager at Sakura is the second-best sushi chef I have ever worked with.  The best one was a grumpy old fart who sliced fish briefly at Benkay for exorbitant sums of money before opening his own rival sushi place, but he could make sushi at the rate of three average chefs.  Sakura’s manager and head chef is Toshi, young but very capable and, by a financial transaction I never fully grasp, he is the new owner of Sakura, having purchased it from Mr. Hoshino with substantial assistance from his wealthy father.

            Sakura seats only about 40 customers.  The exterior is certainly not impressive; the gravel parking lot, flat-shingled roof and flaking paint all call attention to the urgent need for an overhaul.  But we have one important customer who improves the appearance of Sakura just by his presence.  This gentleman, who evidently made a great deal of money with the invention of a computer peripheral in his garage, drives three cars: a Lamborghini, a Ferrari and an Astin-Martin, all three fire-engine red.  He comes for lunch at Sakura several times a week, and his beautiful car sitting in our parking lot draws envious stares.  He likes to eat a sashimi platter with a Hurricane roll.  The Hurricane roll has crab and cucumber inside and smoked salmon and avocado outside, so the outside is green and orange, like the Miami Hurricanes.  I don’t know how this roll migrated all the way to Huntsville, this city likes Auburn or the University of Alabama, but it’s a good seller for us, it keeps our local entrepreneur happy and his beautiful cars gracing our driveway.

            To the kitchen I go for training.  Kind-hearted Tomi (Tomihiro) is in the kitchen, and his first question is: which hand do I favor?  It is a fair question, but I hesitate.  All my life I have been dexterous-confused.  I am plain incapable of writing with my right hand, but I throw right.  I grew up holding a fork in my left hand, but later I switched to the right.  Tomi helps me.  If there is an option, then he will encourage me to use my right hand, like all Japanese chefs.  In Japan, a southpaw would be very rare, a real oddity.

            Tomi instructs me in the proper use of the knife, the cleaning and the sharpening.  He assigns me to make the tempura, standing in the hottest space of the kitchen, beside the deep fryers.  His tempura is light and not greasy, mostly shrimp and vegetables.  Sweet potato, green pepper, carrot, onion and broccoli, all lightly battered and quickly deep-fried.  We cook tempura the traditional way, building up the batter with sprinkles from our chopsticks.  Nowadays the faux-Japanese restaurants take shortcuts, and the tempura is inevitably heavy and overcooked, but mine is sumptuous.

            I take over Tomi’s position and he transfers somewhere else.  I work alongside a tall Japanese brother who mans the grill, and who is so quiet and somber he could almost be called brooding.  I never coax from this brother one shred of personal information, where he is from, his age or his testimony.  Someone confirms for me his name and the sole fact that he is a church member, but apart from that, he is a great big mystery.

Toshi is fortunate to have a few church members working for him, because after us, he has surrounded himself with mostly riffraff, losers and hard-luck cases, with the notable exception of Penny, the sweet-tempered Alabama girl who waits tables at Sakura.  One of the waitresses has a restraining order against her boyfriend, another’s boyfriend is in jail for assault, and another is a mail-order bride from the Philippines.  One of the kitchen helpers holds a knife to a new guy’s throat.  A dishwasher has a disagreement with a waitress about cars, Toyota or Ford, and dumps his dinner in her lap after she flings her water in his face.  The cashier has mental health issues and the cook gets beat up by a band of unknown thugs.  One sushi helper wrecks the Porsche he bought with gambling winnings.  Easy come; easy go, he says.

            But the king of the misfits is Edwin, the Filipino cook who lurks in the darkest corner of the kitchen.  I get along with Edwin okay, but this guy has more dark habits than a closet in a convent.  For example, one time I am riding in Edwin’s car on the way to a basketball game when he swerves to hit or scare a black guy walking alongside the road.  Why did you do that, I ask?  I don’t know.  One day a motorcycle shows up in front of Sakura.  Let me ride it, I ask Edwin.  You don’t want to ride that, he says.  I collected it from a guy who couldn’t pay off his gambling debt.  When a waitress breaks up with him, he drives alongside her and forces her off the road, then beats her up and leaves her with bruises and black eyes.  She cannot work for days.  His oldest brother is a playboy and the next brother is in jail for assault, but Edwin is not dark or brooding, he is just a free spirit with a detached conscience.  Somehow he convinces Toshi to co-sign a loan so he can drive a Nissan 300ZX.  When he defaults on the loan, Toshi picks up the payments and takes the car.  Toshi is driving a bad-looking black 300ZX with a license plate that reads: 0 2 60 B4 U (Zero to sixty before you).

            Our third child is born here in Huntsville, coming so quickly that the doctor is absent and the nurse has no time to put on gloves.  Now our family is five, but Toshi thinks families can be a distraction from work.  He insists that work is the first priority, family is second, and this creates a tension between us.  Toshi and I have very different priorities, and sometimes that is hard to reconcile.  After about six months of making tempura, I ask Toshi to teach me to make sushi.  Perhaps the timing is fortuitous; he needs help at the bar and he grants my request.  From my point of view, this is the final step in learning every aspect of the Japanese restaurant, from the back of the house to the front of the house. 

            Toshi is younger than me, very short, intelligent and detached.  He stands on a wooden platform behind the sushi bar to increase his stature, but also, he confides to me, to see down the front of women’s shirts.  He likes nice things, and plays a mean electric guitar.  As I have mentioned, he is an excellent sushi chef, also a strict teacher.  If he shows me something once, his expectation is that I have learned it, and sometimes I have.

            First he teaches me the importance of a sharp knife to the art of making sushi.  Unlike the western chef’s knife, the sushi knife, called yanagi, is only sharpened on one side, so the angle is sharper and the blade is very sharp.  You could shave with a good sushi knife, Toshi says.  The blade is made from high-carbon steel so it is soft and easily sharpened, but if left wet, it will quickly oxidize.  Toshi shows me how to sharpen it using abrasive stones, and how to polish it with Ajax and rolled-up newspaper.  A sharp, shiny blade is a sushi chef’s pride.  It is such a precious tool that sushi chefs, me included, have been known to try to catch a falling knife rather than let it hit the floor, for a cut hand heals, but a broken sushi knife cannot be restored.

            Then he starts to teach me about the fish.  The preparation of the fish is extremely important and varies with the type of fish.  In Japan the sushi chefs are immensely qualified to prepare raw fish.  An apprentice might spend his first three years just making rice and cleaning the kitchen.  In America no such stringent guidelines exist, and sometimes the chefs are inadequately trained.  I am proud to report that Toshi is strict about handling the fish and enforces the highest quality controls.  I learn from a master. 

            The mackerel is prepared using a very traditional method; the fillets are packed in salt for thirty minutes and then soaked in vinegar.  This is the preparation technique that dates to the time before refrigerators and was intended to extend the shelf life of the fish.  In addition, it also created a delicious taste.  Bacteria are the enemy of freshness, and the various components of sushi: ginger, wasabi, vinegar and salt, all inhibit or kill bacteria.

            Salmon is prepared in a manner similar to mackerel, with the additional step of freezing.  Salmon requires special attention just because they spend part of their lives in fresh water.  No other freshwater fish is used as sushi.  Nor will salmon be served in a sushi bar in Japan, but it is popular here in America. 

            Yellowtail, or Hamachi, has an oily, strong taste similar to mackerel but milder, and it is probably the second most popular fish at the sushi bar.  The neck can be kept aside, marinated and broiled for a special treat.

            The king of the fish is tuna.  Number one tuna is bright red with no fishy taste whatsoever.  It is the most popular fish at the sushi bar, but it is even more popular in Japan.  Most of the bluefin tuna are caught off the New England coast and shipped to Japan.  The bluefin might weigh up to one thousand pounds and, in Japan, fetch up to one hundred dollars a pound.  At Sakura we mostly get the smaller yellowfin or big-eye tuna, 20 pound loins shipped by air and arriving twice a week.

            We also serve lots of black tiger shrimp, boiled and soaked in a vinegar/sugar/lemon mix to enhance the taste.  We have octopus, which is sliced with a wavy hand motion to create a ripple effect and scored on the underside to make it less chewy.  Squid, we serve with a mint leaf.  Giant clam should be very fresh, boiled for about ten seconds, and when you drop it on the cutting board, it should move.  Beside the variety of fish, omelet is used as nigiri sushi.  The omelet is made in a square pan and built up in successive layers.  Toshi says he can tell an expert sushi chef just by the way he makes omelet.  I ask Toshi if a woman can be an expert sushi chef.  He says a woman’s hands are too warm.

            Other fish include flounder.  Toshi can cut thin slices of flounder sashimi and create a perfect white flower.  Eel.  Customers often and correctly save the eel for last, because it is covered in a sweet sauce, almost a dessert sushi.  The ocean serves up a colorful palette of seafood, and we occasionally get more exotic species - abalone, sea urchin, surf clam.  Squid livers.  Personally I pass on the squid livers. 

            Toshi says his sushi is not beautiful, but that he is fast.  If a customer is waiting too long for sushi, he doesn’t care how beautiful it looks.  I take this philosophy to heart, for the master has taught me well, but our falling out, when it comes, will be irrevocable. 

There is one other sushi helper at Sakura, Kitae, who is Korean.  Kitae and I are constantly competing with each other to see who can do it faster or better, and in this way we both quickly become adept.  Our main function as sushi helpers, besides prepping the fish and vegetables, is to make rolls.  Rolls, or maki sushi, are one of the four ways sushi is served, the other styles being nigiri sushi, chirashi sushi and sashimi.  Rolls consist of a thin sheet of roasted seaweed, covered in rice and rolled up with fish and vegetables on the inside, and then sliced into bite-size pieces.  Kitae and I can make a roll in about 60 seconds and, although in the beginning some rolls fall apart, with time our rolls are as uniform and crisp as Toshi’s.  The bad joke in all this is that the only thing I learned in college, which I actually use in my new profession, is how to roll.

 Nigiri sushi is a slice of fish on a ball of rice, and this is entirely in Toshi’s province, for he can make it extremely fast and arrange it on the plate so that it is very appetizing.  Sashimi is the fish without the rice, literally slices of raw fish, but the presentation is as exquisite as a painting.  Chirashi sushi is a bowl of rice with assorted fish on top.  But what we sell the most of is maki sushi: rolls.  At Sakura we try to maintain a balance between the traditional and the contemporary.  We offer traditional sushi like nigiri and sashimi, and we have a nice selection of rolls with names like California roll and spider roll, American adaptations of Japanese cuisine.  The California roll is composed of crabstick, avocado and smelt roe, but they don’t even grow avocadoes in Japan.  We have a spicy tuna roll, but most Japanese people don’t eat spicy foods.  There are Japanese restaurants whose menus consist almost solely of rolls, a hundred different varieties, and their clientele is almost exclusively western.

The only rolls that can properly be called traditional are the single-ingredient rolls: tuna roll, yellowtail roll, cucumber roll, ume roll; these might be found in a sushi bar in Tokyo.  Also the futomaki, fat roll, a big mouthful of a roll with crabstick, cucumber, smelt roe, omelet and sweet gourd inside.  The gourd requires a good deal of preparation: it is softened in salty brine and marinated in a sweet sauce, a lot of trouble so we just prepare a little.  If we do have a run on futomaki and run out of materials, then it is my policy to say: sorry, today I’m out of my gourd.

When my rolls are starting to look like they are supposed to, Toshi shows me how to make nigiri sushi.  He forms a ball of rice with three quick movements of his fingers and then slaps the slice of fish on top.  Then I do it.  If I copy his movement about a hundred times, my technique will start to become like his.  He forms another ball of rice and wraps it in a piece of plastic wrap.  Carry this in your pocket, he says, until you instinctively know the exact right size. 

Toshi is not dissatisfied with the job I’m doing, but working under pressure as we are and in such close proximity, there is bound to be conflict.  There is something else there as well, something harder to describe.  Toshi is drifting away from the church, he joined when he was very young, and the resentment he is starting to feel toward the movement comes out in his interactions with me.  But we never actually have an argument or a fight; the worse that happens is one night, a very busy night, when Toshi refuses to speak to me, and I walk out and go home, leaving Toshi to handle the rush alone.

Like any restaurant, some nights are busy and some are slow.  If you could predict the busy nights, you could make a fortune, I suppose.  (Just open on the busy nights.)  But something completely unrelated assures us two weeks of constant and heavy business. 

The Space Shuttle takes off on a 10-day mission.  On board is the space program’s first Japanese astronaut.  Huntsville just happens to be an outpost for NASA, and so, for two solid weeks, a swarm of Japanese journalists, perhaps a hundred of them, descends on Huntsville. 

They flock to Sakura every night for noodles, tempura and, especially, sushi.  One might think that they would use the opportunity to try some new cuisines, but they seem to maintain their customary diets.  For two weeks, Sakura is the busy gathering place for a displaced army of Japanese writers, news people, cameramen and correspondents.

When Toshi decides to start opening Sunday nights, I complain that it is my only night with my family.  You should put work before family, Toshi says.  Though I respect Toshi, he is a church member who does not live as a religious person, and his priorities are the opposite of mine.  Toshi has a fiancée, but he’s thinking about calling it off.  He asks Penny out on a date.  This alarms Mr. Hoshino, who comes to Huntsville to talk to him.  Toshi agrees to spend some time with his fiancée to see if the relationship can be salvaged.  Toshi disappears for a few weeks and I find myself in the position of the head chef.  During this time there is turmoil all around.  Edwin the cook beats up his girlfriend, our waitress, and we fire him.  The bar next door burns down one night, mysteriously.  Toshi finally returns, but he has decided to leave the church, and my future is also affected.          

            I find myself standing at a crossroads.  I can stay at Sakura where there is a measure of security and familiarity.  Or I can leave.  I phone Mr. Hoshino and he says the decision is up to me.  I don’t like the idea of working in an ‘outside’ restaurant (i.e. outside the Unification movement).  The only reason I came here is because I was following Father’s directions.  Father instructed us to start our own restaurant and make it a center of the community and a gathering place for local leaders, and I still intend to do that.

            Next morning I stop by Sakura to inform Toshi I am leaving.  He asks me to stay long enough for him to find a replacement and I decline.  I am returning to Nashville, I tell him, where I have some unfinished business.

BENKAY – It is an immense relief to be back in Nashville.  Even though it entails moving again, and we have accumulated quite a lot of second-hand furniture.  Also because now we are five.  Nashville is a beautiful city, a city of manners and civility, clean and southern.  The only thing I hold against Nashville is its distance from the ocean.  I could never settle so far inland. 

            They make room for me at Benkay, and I punch my timecard, intending to stay a year as I do most places.  But I am only passing through.  Benkay has nothing left to teach me.  Nashville has nothing to hold me.

            The only event of any real consequence to occur during this second stint in Nashville is that Ryoko is pregnant and gives birth.  One thing that can be said about this middle portion of our life is that we move and have children on a fairly regular basis, almost yearly.  This time, though, there is a surprise waiting; Ryoko carries two boys in her womb.  They arrive in the dead of winter, days before a massive ice storm paralyzes middle Tennessee.  The first boy arrives five minutes before noon – a morning baby.  The second one comes five minutes later, afternoon.  The first one comes squalling, but the second one is strangely quiet.  What’s wrong with him, Ryoko asks.  He just needs a jump-start, says the doctor, and, moments later, the cries of both boys fill the room with their dual demands for attention. 

            The ice storm knocks out the power to much of Nashville.  Ryoko can’t even bring the boys home, but goes to stay with a friend, while I sleep in the freezing cold in our apartment, waiting for the lights to come on. 

            Ryoko is really challenged in the wake of the births of the twins, who form a kind of tag team and take turns wearing her out.  Ryoko has her work cut out for her, raising five children and not one of them old enough to start school, and me working a lot and not much help when I am home.

            Ryoko and I are in agreement, however, that it is time to go home.  I grew up in North Carolina and my parents are still there, though divorced.  The kids barely know their grandparents.  So I make some phone calls.

            I discover that there is a restaurant in Cary, North Carolina called Little Tokyo that is owned by a Unification member.  Cary is a suburb of Raleigh and only a couple hours from where my parents reside, a manageable distance.  We might not want to live right next door, I explain to Ryoko.  After so many years away, I’m not sure how my parents will receive me. 

            So I say a prayer and call the manager, Takahashi-san, who goes by Ron.  I explain who I am and my background, and ask him to consider hiring me on as a sushi chef. Ron says he will consider it.

            Several days pass.  Finally I receive a call from Ron.  Fateful call.  He can use me, but he’s not able to pay much.  In fact, if I take this position, my salary will drop precipitously.  Our family of seven will have to learn to survive on $1300 a month.  That covers rent and groceries, but not much else.  An austere, no-frills life, but the kids can grow up in closer proximity to their grandparents.

            I go looking for the manager of Benkay, and I find him manning his position behind the sushi bar.  Smiling I shake his hand and say, sayonara.

Actually sayonara may be too strong a term.  The Japanese word conveys a finality not suggested by our goodbye, more like goodbye forever, but I have made many friends through Benkay and I hope to see some of them in the future.  One of my friends and my favorite Christian singer, Amy Grant, hands me an index card with her Nashville address on it.  We tour all over the country, she says. Write me when you get your own restaurant and maybe one day the whole band will come for dinner.  I put her address in a big box which goes on a big truck along with all our worldly possessions and we transport all our stuff and ourselves thirteen hours east.  Heading home!

LITTLE TOKYO - Little Tokyo occupies a long, narrow space in a small shopping center.  To fit everything in the space required a convoluted design that has tables lined up on both sides of the dining room in a seating arrangement resembling a school bus.  The sushi bar is not visible from the front door; nor can the manager, Ron, see the cash register from where he stands.  He desperately wants to redesign the interior, and has drawn up a number of blueprints, but so far the owners won’t fund the project.

            Ron Takahashi is a fine sushi chef, and he conveys many pointers to help me improve my sushi, but he doesn’t mind leaving me in charge of the sushi bar if he has some pressing business.  When he needs to take time off, I step in as the head sushi chef and this gives me confidence that I have arrived, that my sushi is good enough for Japanese customers.  From this time, I can say that I have learned the craft to the extent that, given the opportunity and the resources, I could probably open my own place.  It is a dream I have held for a long time, since I was a young man it seems.  I am even qualified to teach others how to make sushi, and, ironically, some of my students are Japanese.

            So what does a white boy, a gai-jin, know about sushi.  Quite a bit, as it turns out.  I’ll always be at a disadvantage to my native Japanese counterparts, who, graduated from breast milk to soy sauce while still in infancy.  But anyone can make sushi, even a woman, it just requires a love for sushi and proper training, and I learned from the best. 

            Ron and I work side by side, and Little Tokyo is doing a pretty good business, but his boss at headquarters is not happy.  Ron is under pressure to generate more income, but none of the profits are being reinvested in the business.  Little Tokyo is going through some tough times. 

            I get a second job waiting tables at a chain restaurant to help make the frayed ends meet.  I leave the finances in Ryoko’s capable hands and somehow we get by, but only just.

            Ron is happy to take off Saturday mornings to play golf, and I like working when he’s not there.  I notice one pretty Chinese lady that comes for sushi most Saturdays.  She is friendly and one day she asks me about my background as a sushi chef.  Where did you learn to make sushi?  How long have you been making it?  Where did you meet your wife?  She comes in so regularly that I miss her if she doesn’t show.  Then one day after I make her lunch, she drops a bomb.  She’s looking for a sushi chef for her restaurant and would I be interested?  Perhaps, I say, understated as always, but I would require a certain salary (roughly twice what I make at Little Tokyo).  That’s not a problem, she says.

            I have said that the totality of the course of my life seemed to consist of a series of steps, each one standing on the foundation and rising above its predecessor.  Some people discern cycles which consist of a specific number of years and repeat endlessly, perhaps even into the next world.  Who can know what toll is required to gain access to the next road or where it will lead, for we are not given a map to locate ourselves and are only vaguely aware of the destination.  Only in looking back can we see for certain whether a turn was beneficial or detrimental. 

            I have arrived at the most critical step of this particular course, my course as a sushi chef.  This will be a step which draws me out, exacts a price, leaves a mark and tastes bitter, but my faith has an existential element which causes me to say: I am given what I need to grow. 

MING GARDEN - Andy and Vivian are the Chinese couple who become my new bosses.  Ming Garden is located in Chapel Hill, a memory from my past that could not seem more like a homecoming than if I had planned it, for here is the University of North Carolina, where I studied, or more accurately, attended in my youth. 

            Vivian can be described as pretty, she was probably beautiful when she was young, but when angered her face changes and becomes dark, and she is prone to angry moods.  Andy is a decent man, a stereotypical hen-pecked husband, and his primary pleasure is drinking beer and watching movies filled with action and mayhem after work.  Their teenage son is often at the restaurant, helping out in front, but it is obvious that he resents spending his adolescence here at the restaurant under his parent’s stern eyes. 

This is a Chinese buffet, but Vivian has the business acumen to realize that she can catch and ride the wave of popularity of sushi.  Unfortunately, business is in decline, and adding a sushi bar will not save it.  Ming Garden does a good lunch business, but dinner customers are scarce.  The sushi bar is tucked into a back corner, and Vivian, to my dismay, darkens the large windows, creating atmosphere, but hiding what’s inside.  I attract a few regular customers, but nothing like the flood of business Vivian is anticipating, and she stubbornly holds that against me.

            For me, the slow pace is a blessing, for it allows me to spend time with my customers talking about music, movies, Tar Heel basketball, almost anything but religion and politics, two very sensitive topics that I learn to avoid, except with people I trust.  I learn their names and, when my memory fails me, I start to write names down in a journal, along with a description and some point of reference.  Standing behind the sushi bar, on that rare busy night, I look out across the dining area and see all my friends, kind of like that lyric from an old song: They sit at my bar and put bread in my jar. 

            The Chinese have a vicious work ethic, and I am expected to conform.  We are closed Sunday; otherwise I might not have a day off at all.  Days are long, beginning around nine, and by the time I finish cleaning up, it is nearly eleven at night.  It is midnight when I get home.  Often, at closing time, when I’m tired and ready to clean up, Vivian will ask me to make her dinner.  But that doesn’t really bother me.  There is intrigue between the staff, and some backbiting, but none of that really gets to me.  But there is one incident that is hard to forgive.

            We have a busy lunch.  Afterwards, while I’m cleaning up, Vivian’s son sheepishly informs me that there was a message.  Ryoko has gone to the hospital.  Ryoko is nine months pregnant, so this is a call I was expecting, but I am irritated that they waited till after the lunch rush to tell me such important news.  I rush to the hospital, a long way, but there is no joy in this birth.  The umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck; she is stillborn.

            I take a couple days off, much to Vivian’s chagrin, but I will not be rushed in my grief.  From now on, my first loyalty is to my customers, not my bosses.  I plant a willow in the front yard in memory of our loss.  When I return to work, the Nicaraguan boy working in the kitchen has a simple word for me: Lo siento.  

            My customers are great and for them, this unexpected sushi bar hidden away in a Chinese restaurant is a secret they share only with friends.  Sometimes new customers stumble upon the sushi bar quite by accident.  One man walks in, looks around, and gravitates to the back where I am slicing fish. You don’t look Japanese, he says.  This is Dave, and he will become one of my best customers.

            Another is Josh, a mountain of a man, twice as big as a usual person, and he eats about twice as much.  He quickly becomes my most frequent flyer, and I see him up to four nights a week.  Josh comes in after he gets off work at the dry cleaners, and sometimes he doesn’t show up until almost closing time.  Then Vivian frowns; she is happy to take his money, otherwise she finds him a bit of a nuisance, but he sits at my bar and puts bread in my jar, we talk about music and movies, and I discover in the course of conversation, and to my great interest, that both his parents are writers.  More than just writers, one is an outspoken, firebrand columnist and former Time magazine correspondent.  The other is a successful novelist and a local patron of aspiring authors.  As I am Josh’s friend I am automatically drawn into the circle of their family and friends, including many creative people.

AKAI HANA - As I close in on two years at Ming Garden, I hear a rumor that the restaurant is on the market.  Seems like I spent 18 months to two years in most of the restaurants where I worked.  I start looking for my exit.  I submit applications at various Japanese restaurants as well as some chains like Pizza Hut and Bo Jangles.  But God has heard my prayers and a door opens where I didn’t even know a door existed.  Josh’s parents, the writers, approach me about opening a sushi bar.  With hands almost shaking with excitement I draw up a proposal for a new restaurant.  I try to be as detailed as possible, including everything from the cost of silverware to the type of background music, and when I have addressed every issue I can possibly think of, and estimated the start-up costs (underestimated as it turns out), I pass it on to my would-be benefactors. 

            There are several stipulations that I am asked to agree to, one of which is that Josh will be an employee in the new restaurant.  I readily accept this condition, Josh and I are friends, but I point out that in hiring Josh, I’m losing my best customer. 

             For a name for the new restaurant, I consult Ryoko.  Many of our friend’s restaurants have names with ‘Hana’, the Japanese word for flower, in it.  I ask Ryoko if there is a Hana beginning with the letter ‘A’, my sole motivation being to steal first place in the phone book, and she suggests Akai Hana, and just like that, a star is born.

            Akai Hana Japanese Restaurant, after coming soon for six months, opens for business on June 15, 1997, and we are swamped.  The crowds stream in, stretching us to capacity, and we start running out of fish.  We run out of rice.  In one sense the first day is a disaster, but it portends a busy future.  I quickly realize that I will not survive as the lone sushi chef, and I add a second and eventually a third person behind the sushi bar.  I start to furiously prepare more fish, fearing in a dark corner of my mind that I am single-handedly depleting the oceans of tuna, salmon and flounder. 

            Later in the evening, when the cashier has counted the money and the last customer has exited and the dishwashers, waitresses and cooks have all gone home; I take one last look around and think that this here is something I could not have done by myself.  I hold up the key and look at it – Not for my own benefit but for the sake of the community, I open these doors.  The staff is like a family, and God has entrusted them to me to deal with using respect and fairness.  The course that He maps out and that I traverse involves, more than anything else, learning how to serve.

Want to read more?  Click on Shadowland to access the whole story.  If you would like to comment on this article, you can email the writer at akaihanarestaurant@earthlink.net.