By: Ali Syarief
The morning air in Yokohama was still crisp when Sir Tanaka knocked on my door.
“Today, we hunt for flavor,” he said with a smile. His wife, Mayumi-san, was already seated in the front seat of the car. Our destination: a small seafood restaurant in Odawara, which they described as a “sacred place” for sashimi lovers.
The two-hour drive felt like the prologue to a story. The road cut through the edges of the city, with glimpses of the coastline shimmering between the trees. When we finally arrived in Odawara, the scent of the sea greeted us—subtle yet undeniable. The restaurant was modest, its signboard unpretentious, but the line of customers outside stretched like a patient river waiting to meet the ocean.
We stood for an hour, shuffling forward in quiet anticipation. No one complained. Everyone seemed to understand that time itself was the first seasoning of the meal to come.
When at last we were seated, the waiter arrived with sashimi glistening like thin sheets of glass catching the light of the sea, alongside golden fried fish whose crispy skin crackled at the slightest touch. The first bite was like freezing time—fresh, naturally sweet, as if the ocean itself had sent a greeting to my tongue.
This visit was not a whim. It had been planned even before I set foot in Tokyo. For Sir Tanaka, coming here once a month is a ritual. He doesn’t just eat here; he returns to relive an experience that, to him, borders on the spiritual.
There is a Japanese saying: “Hara wa ichiban shinjitsu na monogatari o kataru”—the stomach tells the most honest stories. Perhaps this is why many Japanese treat dining not merely as eating, but as an event worth honoring.
I was reminded of another moment with a different Japanese community. Planning five consecutive nights of dinners together was like curating a small festival: Indonesian food on the first night, Chinese the next, then Italian, and so on. Every detail was decided a month in advance. There was no room for chance—each evening was a chapter in a shared story.
The Japanese philosophy of ichigo ichie—that every encounter happens only once in a lifetime—comes alive here. Eating is not just about satisfying hunger, but about cherishing the moment, nurturing relationships, and building memories that linger long after the table is cleared.
As Natsume Sōseki once wrote, “The moon is beautiful, isn’t it?”—a phrase less about the moon itself than about the feelings we share in the moment. Dining in Japan feels the same; it is never just about the food, but about the silent bonds and unspoken gratitude that form around it.
In the end, eating in Japan is not only about what you consume, but about what you keep—with you, in your heart, in your memory, and in the stories you’ll tell. Like the sea that always returns to embrace the shore, that taste will return each time you close your eyes—and you’ll find yourself smiling, as if you had just swallowed a fragment of eternity.
