NATURE AND LIFE

The Restaurant My Father Used to Love

I visited it 47 years later by chance

Ojiya is ready — photo by Author

Although I don’t remember exactly when, it must be on a spring or early summer night in 1979. I was a junior in high school and got accepted to spend a whole year in the US as an exchange student through an organization called AFS, then known as American Field Service. Before I left for the US in July, my father took us to a fugu (blowfish) restaurant for a family dinner.

My father, being the owner of a small electricity construction company, worked hard and was seldom at home for dinner time. Even on the weekend, he would usually be gone visiting worksites. So, going out for dinner with the family itself was a special event for me. My father must have realized that not seeing his only daughter for an entire year was not a trivial matter.

And considering that his daughter would be away from Japan for a whole year, my father must have thought it through to decide which restaurant to take us.

The restaurant’s name was Seigetsu 清月. Our family was taken to a tatami-mat room upstairs. We were the only customers in a rather large room.

From the way my father and the okami, or proprietress of the restaurant, were talking to each other, I sensed that they had known each…