Longing, Reality, Hope

Ever since I was small, I have gone on yearning for the world of craftsmen. The carpenter, many tools hung at his waist, moving deftly and skillfully atop the beams. The gardener at his break, settled on the veranda, sipping tea with his apprentices. The cook playing pachinko in setta sandals with white thongs and tabi socks, a hand-knitted scarf around his neck. Feelings like these were part of why, in my high-school days, I worked a part-time job with two friends at a small Japanese restaurant near my home.

Of course the work was every night spent washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen. I couldn’t even speak directly with my seniors—the head chef, the simmering cook, the grill cook—and received every scolding and instruction from the errand-boy elder, so it was a harsh world of adults, far removed from what I had yearned for. My one pleasure, though it was the same every day, was the staff meal: half a block of cold tofu, miso soup, and free refills of white rice. The days and months flowed by in an instant, and on the very day I quit, the head chef said to me for the first time, “Thanks, kid—you were a big help. Take care of yourself,” and it made me glad.

Those words seem to support even my life with flowers to this day, and I found myself seized with a sudden urge to wear those white-thonged setta I bought, back then, out of longing.