Free Rice, Noodle, Fish by Matt Goulding Page A

the evening:
    â–  Osakans are hilarious. More than 50 percent of Japan’s professional comedians come from Osaka. (Kyotoites, despite living just twenty minutes away, are a decidedly unfunny species, I’m assured by everyone at the table.)
    â–  Everyone thinks Tokyo has Japan’s best sushi, but they’re wrong. Osaka does, because Osaka gets the best fish. Serious eaters from Tokyo take the train down just for dinner.
    â–  Osaka sake is really great, because Osaka water is really great. (At which point we switch from French wine to Osaka sake . . . Point taken.)
    â–  Osakans love foreigners, even if foreigners haven’t fully embraced Osaka. “Please tell people to come.” I’m on it, dudes.
    â–  Osakans once dumped a statue of KFC magnate Colonel Harland Sanders in the Dotonbori River to celebrate a victory by the Hanshin Tigers in the 1985 Japan Championship Series. The Tigers then went on an eighteen-year losing streak, giving birth to the Curse of the Colonel theory and inciting city officials to dredge the river in search of the shipwrecked birdman. He was eventually found in 2009, though his left hand and eyeglasses remain lost to the canal; only when those are found, Osakans speculate, will the curse be fully lifted.
    â–  Osaka is really awesome.
    From Madame X’s private parlor we slip our way back into the world of legal establishments. Yuji Kawabata is a well-known restaurateur with six popular izakayas clustered around the Namba area. He’s also an artist, a ceramics collector, a deep thinker, and a celebrated drinker. Soul mate material.
    His restaurant is closed by the time we arrive, but he ushers us upstairs to a table, opens a massive bottle of sake, and instructs his kitchen to give us everything they’ve got. Out comes everything: piles of blistered shishito peppers, golden fried sandwiches of taro root stuffed with minced pork, bowls of dashi-braised daikon, a tower of yakitori, including my favorite, tsukune , a charcoal-kissed chicken meatball rich with fat and cartilage, meant to be dipped in raw egg yolk. My chopsticks cannot move fast enough.

    The Osaka night begins to buckle at the knees.
    (Michael Magers, lead photographer)
    As we work our way through a second bottle of sake, Yuji presents me with two of his favorite pieces from his ceramics collection, a violet sake pourer from a young Osakan artist and a pimply pink bowl from southern Kyushu. I do what I’ve been told to do with all gifts: refuse once politely, then accept with exaggerated displays of gratitude.
    Not a city, a sensation . . . lights grow, night flows. . . . Osaka decides, we can’t say no.
    At 2:00 a.m. the airline execs call for a nightcap. As we walk up the stairs to Teppan-Yaro, a bar not far from Yuji’s restaurant, I realize that I have been here before, six months ago on my maiden Osaka voyage. That night ended in a blur of whisky shots and air guitars. Somewhere in my parting words was a promise to return soon.
    We open the door and the room explodes. A team of line cooks working the griddle raises spatulas in a spirited salute to our posse. The owner, skinny with long hair and the faintest whisper of a mustache, comes from behind the counter and pulls me in close to his chest. “You came back!” Music is cranked. Drinks are proffered. The night begins to buckle at its knees.
    Clickety-clack . . . Whisky Pete is back . . . #mayocoma! . . . one-eyed purple people eater.
    The Stones bleed through the speakers and the shots ring out and the men work the teppan with manic fury. It’s unclear if anyone has ordered food, but they keep cooking: clickety-clack, clickety-clack.
    The drink of the house is a purple potion made with vodka and juice andcrushed unicorn horns. A decree has gone out across the bar to drown me in this shit.
    I’m not used to this kind of treatment. The tourist is a fragile species in Japan, treated with guarded respect