1. Sabeen Abbas — The Art of Concentration
Sabeen Abbas
The Art of Concentration
I t’s seven p.m. on a Tuesday and Sushi Tetsu is packed with business-
men celebrating the end of the workday with sushi, a smoke and
Kirin beer. My friend, Tae, and I sit at the crowded counter table in
the basement restaurant of Sendai Station. Tae, a new graduate, used
to work part-time as a waitress here, when she was a university student.
With little more than a month left in my one year teaching contract in
Japan, I had confessed to her my dream of interviewing a sushi chef.
Later, I received a text on my cell phone from Tae: “I talked with
chef. He can meet Tuesday or Wednesday night. Tell me what day is
better. Have a nice day!”
And that is how I came to be sitting across the counter from Sushi
Chef, Hideki Soga. He wears a white happi coat over a white T-shirt,
and a white hat. Behind a glass counter displaying trays of fresh uni,
slices of fatty tuna, entire marble-eyed fish, Hideki-san’s hands mould
sushi rice into perfect rectangles. He has a heart-shaped mouth and
eyes that smile.
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2. Sabeen Abbas — The Art of ConcentrationConcentration
— The Art of
“Konnichiwa,” Tae says hello to her former colleagues. The staff
wear black uniforms, and hustle bustle about with platters of sushi. Tae
orders green tea for us, “O-cha, onegaishimasu.”
From absolute zero, eleven months ago, I have inched up to a level
three or four (on a scale of ten) in my Japanese ability. I still make plenty
of mistakes. I recently introduced myself as, “I think I am Sabeen.”
I wanted to communicate with people in their mother tongue. After
months of understanding very little, I can now make sense of everyday
things. The language is no longer an indecipherable code. It seems to
me that people have started speaking slower and I can hear most words
even if I don’t know their meaning.
Unlike the majority of adults, Hideki-san shows an active interest in
speaking English. For the past year and a half he has studied at a private
English school. Our conversation is a hybrid of English and Japanese,
smoothed along by the presence of Hideki-san’s English teacher at the
same counter (What a coincidence!) and Tae’s electronic dictionary.
Hideki-san serves us an appetizer of lightly seared katsuoboshi slices
in a clear sweet broth with grated daikon radish on top. The dish has the
effect of cooling us despite the smoke and heat.
He asks, “Do you want to try?” holding up a spiky purple thing the
approximate size and shape of a sweet potato. “It’s koya.”
Tae’s electronic dictionary translates, “Sea anemone.”
I shrug and agree. I am here to try new things. The cut up koya is
served with lemon slices. I tell myself to be brave and try one yellow
bite, but the texture is chewier than octopus and slimier than natto. I
encourage Tae to finish the rest.
“What made you want to be a sushi chef?” I ask.
Hideki-san leans forward and concentrates. “Once more, please.”
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3. Sabeen Abbas — The Art of Concentration
I repeat the question.
He does a mental translation of the question and quickly checks his
understanding with the English teacher. Hideki-san tells us, “When I
was a junior high school student, we went on a school trip. I am from
the mountains. We went to Shiogama by the sea. I ate lunch at the
main shop. I thought I want to work here.”
Tae and I wait while a fresh batch of rice cooks in a large steel rice
cooker. The rice is then cooled in a large cypress tub. Hideki-san uses a
wooden paddle to gently stir in the vinegar, sugar and salt so that each
grain of rice is coated without being crushed.
I find out that when Hideki-san was eighteen years old, he went to
cooking school for one year. After half a year of training, he saw a va-
cancy at Sushi Tetsu and applied. He got the job and has been working
as a sushi chef for the past thirteen years. Usually, it takes three years
of training before becoming a full sushi chef. Hideki-san jokes that he
got a lucky break.
Hideki-san makes the nigiri sushi in front of us. We watch as the
serving platter fills with jewel-like pieces of sushi. The back row has
two kinds of eel, glazed brown with sauce, and paper-thin flounder.
The middle row has two kinds of shellfish, pearly and moist, and
three grades of melt-in-your-mouth tuna. The front row has sweet egg
stamped with the store’s name, shrimp, orange bubbles of cod roe in a
seaweed wrapper, and yellow sea urchin. Last, he places a scoop of pink
pickled ginger in the corner. I forget about conversation and think only
about what piece I’ll eat first.
Sushi is followed by tiny portions of strawberry ice-cream. The con-
versation resumes.
I ask Hideki-san, “What do you like best about your job?”
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4. Sabeen Abbas — The Art of Concentration
He thinks for a moment and says, “Cutting the tuna.” In Japanese
he adds, “The concentration.” He thinks some more. “Hearing Oishii –
delicious – from the customers.”
I look around the restaurant at the people eating sushi like it is an
event. Each bite a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. I look
back at Hideki-san in his chef’s uniform and nod.
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