Sushi With Attitude
Eating Out In Japan
by David Stormer
At the sight of the foreigner walking in, the sushi bar hums in curious
amusement and echoes to cries of welcome. There are only three other customers
here, outnumbered by twice that many sushi bar staff.
One of them is a
gargantuan young man with a sumo wrestler's silhouette who, red-faced
and pouting, stirs a pot on a stove. Another a gaunt middle-aged model
of chefly probity, maintaining an imperious air of dutiful authority.
Of the other four, another man-mountain, slightly taller and a lot less
dour, motions me smilingly to a seat in front of where he is standing,
only a long glass showcase of various freshly dead fishes between us.
Doyama-cho Osaka
 Outside
is the main street - more a generous alley - of Osaka's gay quarters, Doyama-cho. This is a
part of Osaka where the city shows part
of its heart.
Stalked by prides of young men in cheap baggy suits, belts
pulled too tight under jackets with sleeves that are a bit too long, cheaply
dyed hair flopping over their faces, practicing poses of territorial attitude
between expending their patter on old drunken men and horny gullible youths.
People bumping into each other and hardly noticing: a self-involved in-group
preoccupation at the expense of anything outside its narrow confines,
cured of its incest only by remarkable things such as sudden loud noises,
and never by such commonplaces as the occasional homeless men shuffling
by cursing or pissing against the wall.
A general unhurriedness, a languidness,
punctuated by mutual ejaculations of surprise, disgust, pleasure, or whatever
- under which all lies the longing for something novel, something vivid,
something cute.
Can you speak Japanese? Can I speak Japanese? Yes, I can.
The big man displays relief and hospitable pleasure. We discuss what I
want and agree on a course of various sushi chosen and prepared by him.
I order a beer, 'Bottle or cup?' - is his excursion into
solicitous English. I go for a pint 'cup' and settle back for
the fare to come.
From now I start paying for my welcome. Before long certain staff are
looking my way and exchanging the odd glance. The fat man looks my way
and whispers something to his partner with a slightly sour look on his
face. Me a baldy, I catch the phrase 'E.T.', and a stifled giggle.
My requests are met with less and less good grace, but . . . well, this
is Osaka.
Osaka where things that are taken seriously are taken so seriously that
you'd rather not know. Where getting serious is an unfortunate rarity
involving quixotic and dangerous gestures sometimes matched by equally
serious results; and conversely where anything below that level is of
little account: gusts, squalls, things that are said and then float away
forgotten.
And more than just being Osaka, this is a sushi bar: a cultural
institution, as pent-up and rigorous as Japanese baseball, which owes
nothing to anyone, but which is there to be appreciated, valued, and praised;
which follows the prescribed exactitudes and flair when it comes to what
it delivers you, and its tongue when it comes to what it feels.
The real business is conducted like a translucent veneer over personal
likes, dislikes, foibles and opinions.
Moments after the sour muttering
and mumbling, my big man is again beaming as he hands me another plate
of impeccably prepared and delicious twin blocks of sushi. I dip them
in soy sauce, top them with ginger, perhaps a dash of mashed sour plum,
and hanging between the points of my chopsticks, place one in my mouth
where uncooked fish and boiled rice and a touch of horseradish become
something truly memorable - then take another swig of my big ice cold
beer.
By the time I'm almost through, a group of three Japanese men come
in and in the time it takes them to cross the threshold one by one, the
staff, positively presiding from behind the counter, have dismissed them
in just audible mutters, murmurs and guffaws as 'a gangster',
'a tramp', and 'a pimp'.
As 'E.T.' I realize
I actually get off quite lightly! My heart light's glowing, and not
even a bill that comes to close on $40 for the twenty-minute chow can
cause it a flicker.
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