25 July 2025
Supine on the massage table. A distant flute plays softly from the speaker.
“In the Ayurvedic tradition, there are cycles throughout the day and night. And one of them ends around 10pm.”
So, you’re supposed to go to bed early?
“Yes.”
To hell with them then.
The newsletter goes down from midnight to 2am. Then to bed so I can dream about being stuck at Haneda without my passport and wake up gasping for air at 5. The tried and true routine.
A good quote from Herbie Hancock: “Youtube rabbit holes have delayed my album 15 years.”
I watched an interview with the photographer Daido Moriyama. I have a reflexive fondness for artists from Osaka, my dad’s hometown. He was walking around Shinjuku taking pictures of women’s asses and dropping line after line:
“For me, cities are enormous bodies of people’s desires. As I search for my own desires within them, I slice into time, seeing the moment.”
The restaurant is something similar. Desire. What do I really want? What do others want? There is an element of seduction that Rebecca has consistently pointed out. As a small-timer you have to believe that your vision will attract an audience. Market research is for PF Changs. Private equity lads. McKinsey has recommended we open on Tuesdays, before the front door handle breaks from people forcing it open.
The lunch counter is something utilitarian, simply fuel. Quick sake bento and back to the office. At night the lights dim, the candles come out, and a trip to the same place becomes something libidinous. It is for this reason that opening for dinner has felt like starting a new restaurant. It has required a new way of thinking. Lunch is business, dinner is entertainment. Writing the menu the night before is like a love letter. Patrick Bateman speaks to you from across the table:
“You’re going to have the sesame miso bagna fredda with seasonal vegetables. The Santa Fe New Mexican called it a ‘playful but mysterious little dish.’”
At 5:30 I get butterflies like I’m waiting on a first date. And then by 6 she arrives and the excitement of her beauty dispels my fear.
We are judged visually for everything we do. The eyes have always been the gateway to desire. Then Instagram came along and tipped the scales. The hypervisualization and hypersocialization of our private lives, simulated. Restaurants were once social venues but now their impact is multiplied kaleidoscopically. Someone famous liked this picture. I saw her there last week. 10,000 likes. Presentation was important but now the visual dimension is almost everything. Don’t believe your lying eyes, it’s all fake, but Raif really is that handsome.
Rather than describe the taste of the caviar on the buckwheat pancake to your friend, you take a picture of it and reveal its likeness to thousands of people. One of them is sitting at a red light on St. Francis watching you at the two star sushi place in New York eat the pancake and saying to himself, “Fuck.” Now I’m honking at him from behind. Light’s green, paesan. It’s all your fault.
I wish Walter Benjamin were here. He would know what to say. Marx is uninteresting. Historical materialism says nothing about a woman’s neckline, or the brine of an oyster, which is the essence of everything. I am at a loss. As Brian Wilson sang, “I guess I just wasn’t made for these times.”
I have never had any talent with the visual world, but lately things have been catching my eye. On Lena Street we are surrounded by serious artists and works of art. Just walk upstairs. Liam’s Ricoh point-and-shoot reignited a youthful interest in photography. If only I could capture those looks I get. The eyes. Instead I am working on our first run of t-shirts with Cameron. Rasterized shots of Rie-chan and Beat Takeshi. Brace yourself. Zabawa is coming to visit on Sunday. My plan is to lock him in the guest bedroom with a set of charcoals. Let’s see the new logo, John!
I’ve sunk the Ozu millions into old photobooks from Japan. Moriyama. Kawauchi. Hiromix. I’ll buy anything that reminds me of the good old days, and illuminates a world I have fantasized about.
Looking at a picture of a grilled mackerel on a smoky side street of Tokyo I wonder what it would taste like. What’s the difference between a fish and a picture of a fish? The taste. Taste has become sacred because it can’t be digitized. Our tongues, tucked away from the prying eyes of cell phone towers, have become a refuge of human experience.
I’ll close my eyes as I have a bite, not to be distracted. The room falls silent.
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
kyuri sunomono
vinegared cucumber and seaweed salad
yukke
raw grass-fed beef, sesame, garlic, quail egg yolk, aonori potato chips
kanpachi namerou
tartare of raw kanpachi*, white miso, ginger, shiso, over rice
miso butter lobster don
fresh lobster in miso butter over rice with suji aonori
scallop ceviche
raw sea scallops, sudachi, ikura, aonori
Jeju Island hirame sashimi
raw fluke* kombujime, yuzu kosho
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, tuna, scallop, crab, ikura over sushi rice*
basque cheesecake
agar agar fruit jelly
sesame miso cookie