A Happy Ending with Every Hand Roll

Can you think of a better way to turn the worst day around than sushi and sake? It doesn't fix the reason for the day sucking, but it sure makes you forget about how bad it was. Especially if it's dollar sushi night and you have enough sake, which the other night, I did.

I joined my sister, LM, and her family for a lovely sushi dinner following a truly horrible day. We went to a small local Japanese restaurant, half of which had hibachi style dining, the other half regular tables. We didn't have the energy for a show, so we went to the boring side and promptly sat down and ordered up some sake for the both of us. I guess the waiter could tell it was a rough day because he didn't ask what size we needed. He just brought out two large steaming hot volcanic rock bottles with little matching cups. It was too hot to pour, but not if you wrapped the bottle first with a napkin, because who wanted to wait for it to cool down before getting a drunk started?

We also started ordering lots of sushi since the dollar night special was ending in ten minutes and we were still waiting for LM's husband and son to arrive. California rolls, spicy tuna, shrimp tempura rolls, masago, tamago, all the agos. We placed our order with only seconds to spare, and right after the rest of the family arrived, the waiter came to our table carrying a gigantic bamboo boat, its deck covered with brightly colored sushi with its little accompanying piles of pickled ginger and spicy wasabi paste.

"Hey, I always wanted my sushi on one of those big boats!" my sister exclaimed, aided by the sake. "He needs to make a boat noise to go along with that thing." The waiter tried to clear a space for the platter in the middle of the table. "Can you make a boat noise?" LM asked him directly.

Her youngest son pleaded with her to be less obnoxious, or at least quieter about it.

"Ooo-oh," the waiter said, with the best imitation of a foghorn ever done with a Japanese accent.

LM and I clapped our hands excitedly over our victory and descended on the sushi like 17 year locusts on a field of grain.

After that was finished, we ordered another round of sushi. LM's husband and oldest son ordered Thai food, which isn't Japanese, by the way, yet consistently seems to be available at some Japanese restaurants, as if offering other Asian food is their idea of fusion cuisine. Anyway, the waiter brought out the Thai food before arriving with another boat load of sushi, but this time he made more of a "choo choo" sort of sound instead of the foghorn from before.

"Hey, that sounds like a train!" I protested. "That's not a boat sound." He smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. My youngest nephew, SM. looked like he was experiencing intestinal discomfort, when in actuality he was just mortally embarrassed.

While we continued to devour the ridiculous amount of sushi we ordered, my oldest nephew, GM, excused himself to use the restroom. He returned moments later and reported," That was the weirdest bathroom I have ever been in."

"Why?" I asked. "What made it weird?"

"Well, it had a Victoria's Secret catalog and a bottle of hand lotion in it." My nephew is a teenager. He totally knows what that combination means.

"Oh, this I gotta see," I said excitedly.

"Yeah, take her to the boy's room and be the look-out," LM added.

So GM and I scooted around to the hibachi side of the restaurant and through the cloth panels that covered the entrance to the bathrooms. I took a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching us, and then my nephew opened the door and I darted inside. Not just one bottle of lotion, but two were on a small table beside a basket with the lingerie catalog.

We went back to the table and had a seat. "Indeed, he is correct," I said. "It appears to be a welcome respite spot from a boring day at the sushi counter."

LM and I showed an unprecedented level of self-control and did not continue to make jokes about what takes place in that bathroom. No comment about being surrounded by fish odor all day. No joke about the creamy sauce that is sometimes squirted all over a specialty sushi roll. Not even a dig about employees washing their hands before returning to work. Nothing but a little snickering and exaggerated eye movements.

We left the waiter a big fat tip for all the harassment, but really, we weren't so bad. For about an hour, we forgot how bad the bad day was, because of some fermented rice juice, cheap raw fish, and evidence of self-love in a public restroom. Who could ask for anything more?