Akira-san

In the winter of 2017 I was on one of my solo trips and there I found myself staying at a temple on the western end of Kyoto. It was a low season for tourism. I was the only traveler residing at the temple, which itself is in an off-the-beaten path part of the city, and at night I wandered the neighborhood’s quiet streets looking for a place to eat. It was at this point that I opened an unassuming door beautifully adorned with vines and a few chalk drawings and inside I met a man who looked visibly startled to have a visitor. This man’s name is Akira.

Akira-san’s restaurant is his home. Seven seats are arranged around a counter which overlooks a beautiful rustic kitchen. The sort of kitchen you imagined while listening to fairy tales in your childhood. Watching Akira-san cook is like watching a dance. His kitchen is organized in a manner which I’m quite sure only he understands and he moves without pause between his mise en place and his stovetop and his serving ware, transitioning between prep and cook and serve and converse and back again without pause in a seemingly randomly intermixed sequence which he’s obviously honed for decades.

Akira-san is the very essence of hospitality captured and personified into a living breathing man. Every nook of his kitchen and every flick of his wrist and every smile and comment that he makes oozes love and care.

Akira-san has no menu. You eat whatever Akira-san has picked and prepped for that day. If on a given day nobody comes to his restaurant then I suppose he must eat it himself. The food is wholesome and - although I couldn’t tell you what his style of cooking is, other than that it is Akira; nor why, specifically, you will enjoy it - I do assure you that his food is delicious and that it will nourish your body and your soul.

For the next three intermittently snowy 2017 nights I returned to Akira-san’s kitchen. I watched him cook and I ate his food and together we smoked cigarettes and we drank beers and we talked. We spoke of the places I’d lived and visited and of his experience being Japanese and of geopolitics and also of many other topics, I’m sure, although I cannot remember it all these years later.

At some point one of the nights I recall that a group of Europeans opened the door. They startled the two of us, and after a moment’s consideration Akira-san waved them away so that he could return his focus to the task at hand. Me.

Those nights spent in Akira-san’s kitchen became a core memory of my days backpacking as a young man. Akira-san is one of a few individuals I’ve had the fortune to know who together are my understanding of omotenashi. He’s made a lasting impression and touched the way I think about manhood and character and craft and hospitality and purpose.

Yesterday I was traveling in Japan with a few friends of mine. We were in a car passing by a konbini in a quiet part of western Kyoto and I had a flashback to nights past walking through barely snowfall speckled streets to open a whimsical door and spend an evening conversing with my friend Akira-san. Yesterday, eight years and some change later, I frantically searched my photo album hoping that one of my photos would have location metadata included and, lo!, one did and so I used it to triangulate down and find the name of Akira-san’s restaurant. Kitchen Rakuraku.

And thus four San Franciscans found ourselves sitting around his kitchen counter on this one Tuesday night and we watched him work an old but very vivacious stovetop to serve us a meal straight from his heart. Our dinner was somewhat different than the times before. The lighting in his kitchen is a bit brighter now; and this time someone else was there when we walked in; and in me was the smallest bit of nervousness that my friends would not be touched by the in-between of it all as I’d had those times before. But this dinner we shared was also exactly the same: it was Akira-san through and through.

Akira-san didn’t recognize me at first. I hadn’t expected that he would. As we sat down Akira-san began by warning us that he had no menu. I said that was fine. Soon after he apologized for being slow to get the first course ready. He’s not slow in the least bit and we said it was perfect. We asked him for sake and altogether with Akira-san we kanpai’d. Somewhere along the way I think the rhythm of our interaction jogged a memory and the glimmer of familiarity returned to our dialog. He said he was pleased to see me again. We enjoyed the meal Akira-san prepared and we thanked our host whole-heartedly, and before leaving Akira-san and I took another photo together.

Another patron had arrived and it was time for us to go.

Thank you Akira-san. It was lovely to see you again.