45-Why Eight seats ?
For the opening party of my new classroom,
I knew I wanted to do one thing:
invite friends to sit where future guests would sit,
and test everything as if it were real.
Eight friends came.
That number was not random.
Through Christmas catering and private parties,
I had already learned something important:
One sushi chef can truly “hold” about eight people at a time.
Any more than that, and cracks start to appear:
Guests have to wait too long for each piece.
The temperature and texture of the sushi drift away from ideal.
The chef becomes too busy with his hands to truly look at each guest’s face.
I had seen the same truth play out in high-end sushi restaurants in Tokyo:
Small spaces.
Only counter seats.
Often no more than eight chairs.
From the outside, it might look like “luxury minimalism.”
But from behind the counter, I could now see the real reason:
A sushi chef’s job is not only to shape rice and fish.
It is to watch the guests,
listen to them,
sense their pace and preferences,
and quietly adjust what appears in front of them.
There is a physical and emotional limit
to how many people you can truly care for at once.
For me, that number was eight.
So for my first party in my first classroom,
there were eight chairs.
No more.