Tuna Hero

One of my joys of living in Japan is the food. The variety in the Japanese diet is nearly endless as they eat just about anything. The emphasis on quality, freshness, and appearance has been an awakening for my taste buds long dulled to the instant, ready to go, fast food back home. I spent many a weekend wandering around Odawara checking out a bar here and there and occasionally stumbling upon a great eatery. I'm not talking about some Ginza sushi shop where it costs 20,000 yen to dine, but a place that has a certain atmosphere, a warmth and good food that just keeps bringing you back.

Chris showed me one such place, a small kaitensushi-ya (cheap sushi served on a rotating conveyor) called Tuna Hero. How he found the place, I'll never know. Probably just dumb luck. One day, Chris and I managed to drag Molly out of her apartment and convinced her to come along for some sushi at Tuna Hero. It was cheap to eat and if your bill topped 1,500 yen, well, you knew you had just pigged out. Kon-chan, the master, had a conveyor belt in his small shop, but he never really used it. He'd just slice up some fish and bring it over to us.

The walls of Tuna Hero were plastered with pictures of children. In my poor Japanese, I asked the master why there were all these kids on the walls. He said that they were birthday pictures窶杯he kids come in to celebrate on their birthday and he would give them some ice cream as a "present." Being a smart-ass, I quipped that I wanted my picture on the wall, too. And with that, the master produced a camera, lined us up against a mural of a Camero and tiger and took our pictures. Molly was mortified but Chris and I did it all in good fun.

A few weeks later, the photos were on the wall under the clock with a message saying, "Come and study English with us!" There we were, immortalized in customer lore for eternity: Chris and I, the two dippy teachers who would pop in to the nearby pachinko parlor after eating and drop a piddly 500 yen only wonder what the hell did the Japanese see in this silly pastime. Then there was Molly, you could see the reluctant grin on her face. She never went back.

Being close to where we lived, Chris and I went back to Tuna Hero on many more occasions. The Master would chat us up and we'd somehow figure out what he was talking about. When the shop wasn't busy, he'd duck out into his garden and give us some fresh edamame(green soy beans. A perfect match with a cold beer!). On one occasion he gave us whale sashimi and on another, it was aloe sushi.

The shop never really got crowded and I assume that he did a fair amount of business in deliveries in his Tuna hero mobile, a little Suzuki mini-car(probably had a lawn mower engine in it) with a Tuna Hero logo on the doors. We'd see him in the street and he beep his horn and give us a wave.

The moral of the story is this: find a restaurant, be it an izakaya, sushi-ya or yakitori shop to call your own while you're in Japan. It's a place to meet average Japanese, not the eikaiwa crowd who will only ask you your life story ad nauseum. It's a chance to get out of the eikaiwa bubble窶杯he coworkers, gaijin bars, hanging with students. It is too easy to stay within the safety of the gaijin bar and your students. Get out and see something for yourself. Finally, it will do wonders for your social standing. I once took a date to Tuna Hero and my stock with her jumped 10,000% when she saw that not only was my picture on the wall of the shop(thereby granting me some fame), but that the master actually knew me. In her eyes, that was something incredible.

Tuna Hero is still there and five years after the fact, the pictures are still on the wall. It's a little trip down memory lane.

Note: I found out the other day that Tuna Hero is no more and has been converted into a Mahjong parlor. Ah, the memories...
-Shawn