It's silly to think that a sushi bar can make me happy. Ao's place was shuttered for two weeks. For two weeks I couldn't sit at my corner of the bar counter, couldn't watch the master at work, and couldn't put in the same order I do every time: seared albacore, spicy hotate roll, baked mussels and hamachi nigiri. It was a long time to go without something you love, if you'd think about it.
Ao was in a Beatlesesque mood tonight. As "All You Need is Love" was playing, it dawned on me how hard it would be to move away from this neighborhood.
Candice and I found Ao's place by chance, tucked between a travel bookstore and a Chinese restaurant in an alley named Pearl. It was one of our first giddy discoveries in this city of firsts. First co-owned furniture, first friends who only knew us together, and the first thought of, "Hey, maybe let's try doing this life thing, together." Between our coffee kiosk – hidden in another alley over the hill – we carved out weekly routines between cappuccinos and delicate slices of the freshest fish. We introduced Ao's place to our best friends who visited. Every Thursday, I'd meet Candice crossing the street as I biked up the hill from work, and we'd sit next to the broad windows splashed gold by the California afternoon while the smiling waitress chalked up our orders. I proposed to Candice at Ao's counter, our last dinner was here, and it'll be the first place we'll go when she visits.
There's a sense of place, a feeling of home, when you enjoy a routine. Most repetitive things I do are boring, silly or meaningless. Office life can weigh so heavy like dirt piled on my living coffin. And the need to remember birthdays or "wouldn't it kill you to pick up the phone and talk to your mom once in a while" are like mosquito bites -- they leave me a dull sense of resentment after the fact.
So I'd go to Ao's place and decompress, eat tasty grub without the fat guilt and somehow would have the most natural conversation with a guy who garbled English like he's dragging the words over sandpaper. "Oaowhysshea, I hatsh a gurated tame in Japan." The place felt right. 20 years from now, I'll still sit at the corner stool and Ao will still put out the same dishes with the same exactitude. Perhaps we'll know each other better. But perhaps not – that's the awesome bit.
One of the great things about Ao's place was it's size. For a small space that fit 16 patrons, you felt like you had good space there. I could squeeze between the laughing couples and neighborhood folks and understood that I'm completely in my own space. Ao doesn't talk unless you piped up, and the fact that he left me be to read my book or the news or just looked at the funny decorations on the wall – that meant everything after days where paper shuffling was replaced by pointless forwards and always-full inboxes and meeting invites.
Sometimes the best kinds of things are left unsaid, because their meanings will be lost if they escape. Thoughts are funny sometimes like that. Some of them are like fruit -- if you leave them out in the open too long, they'll just spoil.
The only bad thing about the place was also the size. You'd have to put your name and the number in your party on a little whiteboard. Come at the wrong time, and you could linger for hours to get a spot. I was pretty down when I came in today, since there were 8 groups ahead of me. I wanted to wait, because this was the first week the place was opened since Ao's Tokyo trip. I didn't want to wait because I was hungry. Luckily, the smiling waitress saw me and slid me to the side – the stool at the end of the counter was mine for the taking, she had shyly whispered.
All you need is a bit of time.