17 October 2025
The vibe has reached a new level. The collabs are stacking up. Curry buns from Warren. DJ Raif. Avery brought in an Ozu apron made from an Italian military duvet. There is a very rare cotton grown in New Mexico that goes straight to a mill in Osaka, the old Ozawa neck-of-the-woods, where our name is still registered. A message from my grandfather perhaps, who bought and sold cotton in Dallas and New York in the 30s. Life becomes very cinematic when you surrender yourself to its momentum.
Warren joined us for our Sunday hike through the Pecos. Afterward we watched The Milky Way, one of Buñuel’s least remembered masterpieces. A surrealist pilgrimage of two friends to Santiago de Compostela. Our Sunday hikes are something like that. Quo vadis, Warren? “I return to Santa Fe to start a bakery.”
The gang and I have been quietly assembling a sound system in the dining room. Not the little bookshelf speakers in the corners, we’re talking turntables, tube amps, real sound. Some of Japan’s best work. Dusted off just in time to blow the fuses off Kim’s old amplifier and then hidden away again in the bunker.
I consider myself Japanese first, and a businessman second, and maybe a cook third or fourth. I got into this line of work because I felt that the world was out there doing us back to ourselves. There is this beautiful scene in the Sopranos when Paulie Walnuts and Pussy walk into a thinly veiled Starbucks for the first time and have a look around.
“Fuckin’ Italian people, how did we miss out on this? Fuckin’ espresso, cappuccino. We invented this shit and they’re getting rich off it.”
Taking it all in as a young lad. Jazz kissa in Barcelona. Katsuobushi sprinkled on roasted brussel sprouts in LA. It’s cool that everyone showed up to the party. Still, we have to be telling our stories. Though I was born into the family’s New Jersey era, my credentials are impeccable. We were in this country just long enough to be interned and sent back to those mossy isles to be bombed. The GI pinups and girly mags of the occupation brought us back to the wheat fields where we resumed operations…
The 90s were a special time in Japan. They called it the Bubble and eventually it burst. There was an energy then that hasn’t come back. The economy stalled. A Pocari Sweat is still a hundred yen and change.
The so-called cultural appropriation never bothered me because it was never threatening. Besides, it was a nice change of pace. The old timers went through hell in this country. Interned and kicked around. No Japs or dogs. What a time to be alive. Now it’s chic. Business is good, and there’s a few sushi-ya in downtown Charleston, West Virginia. Ideas pass from one place to the other. People get inspired and run with it. Zach asked me why they drive on the left side in Japan. And I told him they copied the English.
Studied Japaneseness can’t stray too far from the original, but a wayward Hapa never needs to worry about losing his touch.
Yasujiro Ozu, the great director, had a summer resort he and his writing partner would visit every summer in Kamakura. They would make curry sukiyaki in their room, a hybrid dish they may have invented. The villa is still there, and they boast the room he liked still has the grease stains on the ceiling from his cooking. Adding curry powder to a classic dish has been in the back of my mind since reading that. Making the mapo tofu last night I added curry powder and a new dish was born.
Niigata senbei
Japanese rice crackers, choice of black pepper, uni, squid, nori, or a mix of all 4
temaki
choice of blue crab, maguro, kanpachi namerou, or ikura
sesame miso bagna fredda
local raw vegetables with an umami-rich anchovy dip
hiyashi salad
local lettuces, radish, cucumber, sesame ginger dressing
owan
rich fish stock miso soup
white anchovy salad with shiso vinaigrette
marinated white anchovies over local greens with fresh shiso dressing
scallop ceviche
raw sea scallops, sudachi, ikura, aonori
kanpachi namerou
tartare of kanpachi with white miso, ginger, shiso, over rice
Japanese beef curry mapo tofu bento
local pork and grass-fed beef stewed in a spicy Sichuan sauce & our house-made curry spice with tofu over Japanese rice with hiyashi salad and pickles
seared scallop bento
seared sea scallops over Japanese rice, hiyashi salad & pickles
maguro bento
raw bluefin tuna over sushi rice with hiyashi salad, pickles
chirashi
raw hamachi, maguro, saba, hirame, scallop, tai, ikura, uni over sushi rice*
basque cheesecake
yuzu coconut rice pudding