From an Empty Room to the First Guest: Opening My Sushi Class in 2023
Chapter 31: The Room Next Door
Where Would I Teach?
Even while I was studying at Tokyo Sushi Academy, one question kept circling in my mind: “Where am I actually going to teach this sushi class?”
Skills? Yes. Knife work? Yes. Edomae techniques, rice, fish, timing—every piece of the sushi class was gradually falling into place.
I knew that sooner or later, Japan would fully reopen. Tourists would come back. When that happened, I wanted to be ready.
But the one thing I still didn’t have was a place to actually welcome my guests.
An Empty Room Changes Shape
Back then, I was living in a small, slightly tired apartment building in the south of Tokyo. Nothing fancy. A narrow hallway, no elevator—the kind of place you choose when you’re self-employed and every yen matters.
One day, I noticed that the couple living next door had moved out.
At first, it was just a detail in my daily routine—another empty room in an old building. But as I kept going to sushi school every Saturday, as I practiced my nigiri at home, as I imagined future guests shaping rice at a counter in front of me, the empty room next door slowly changed shape in my mind.
It stopped being “someone else’s old apartment.” It started to look like a potential classroom.
Four walls I already knew. A floor plan I could almost draw from memory. No need to commute. No need to negotiate with a landlord I’d never met.
It was right there. Close enough that, whenever I opened my own door, I could almost feel possibility leaking out from behind the other one.
Chapter 32: A Conversation with My Landlord
A Landlord Upstairs
In my building, the landlord lived upstairs on the second floor. Not a faceless company, but a real person I had exchanged greetings with for years.
I also knew something else: this old building was not exactly popular on the rental market. Finding new tenants for an aging unit with no elevator was getting harder and harder.
A Request on New Year’s Day
On New Year’s Day, we happened to run into each other in front of the building. I took a breath and said:
“I’d like to rent the room next to mine as well. I’m planning to start a sushi class for overseas guests there. Would you consider renting it to me as a second unit?”
For a moment, he said nothing. Then his face softened.
He had been worrying about that empty room. No inquiries, no applications—just an unused space losing money month after month. To him, I wasn’t an unknown risk. I was a tenant he already knew: someone who paid on time and didn’t cause trouble.
On my side, I had done my own calculations:
- If a new tenant moved in, that chance would be gone.
- If I took it, I could control the timing.
- And I could negotiate from a position of mutual benefit.
“If It’s You”
Finally, he nodded. “If it’s you, I’ll be happy to rent it. Use it for your sushi class.”
Just like that, I had something I’d never had before. Not just a dream of a class, but a physical space for it—an empty, echoing room waiting to be turned into a stage.
Chapter 33: A Key to an Empty Room
Paying Rent Before the First Guest
Of course, saying yes to that room meant something else, too. It meant rent—every month, even before a single guest sat down at my counter. It meant committing to a future that hadn’t fully arrived yet.
Japan’s borders had only just reopened. Tourists were only beginning to trickle back. No one could promise when things would return to “normal,” or what “normal” would even look like.
On paper, it was honestly too risky a decision.
A Positive Debt to My Future Self
But strangely, I didn’t feel crushed by the risk. I felt… awake.
That second room became a kind of positive debt to my future self: “You’ve taken this on. Now you must grow into the person who can fill it.”
I had walked away from the safety of a salary. I had survived a pandemic by reinventing myself as a food photographer. I had gone back to school to rebuild my skills from the ground up. Now I was adding another layer: a key to a room that was still completely empty, but already full of expectations.
Walls, a Floor, and Permission
I didn’t have the furniture yet. I didn’t have the equipment yet. I didn’t have bookings yet.
But I had walls. I had a floor. I had permission. And I had a clear, simple promise to myself: “When the tourists return, this room will not be empty anymore.”
I closed my hand around the new key, felt the weight of the metal in my palm, and knew this was not just real estate. It was another step in my journey from guide to teacher, from student of sushi to host of a new kind of Edomae experience.
I didn’t know it yet, but the next time I opened that door, I wouldn’t just be walking into a room. I’d be walking into the next chapter of my life.
Chapter 34: Bringing the Room to Life
Second-Hand Tables, Mismatched Chairs
By the time my landlord quietly handed me the keys in mid-January, I was already calling this empty room “my classroom” in my mind.
Because I got the keys a little earlier than planned, I could bring the place to life piece by piece. Second-hand tables. Mismatched chairs. Bowls and knives lined up where students might someday sit.
I’d stand in the middle of that small, aging room and try to imagine people I hadn’t met yet—travelers in Tokyo shaping their very first nigiri with slightly clumsy hands, laughing as grains of rice stuck to their fingers.
By the end of January, it was still old and still small, but it no longer felt like “the vacant unit next door.” It finally felt like what ten years of twists and turns had been leading toward: a place where a journey could begin.
All it needed now was a guest.
Publishing the Listing
On January 30, I opened my laptop, logged into Airbnb Experiences, and created the listing for my sushi class.
Title, description, photos, schedule, price—I filled in each field carefully, as if every sentence were a quiet promise to someone somewhere in the world: “If you come here, I’ll welcome you. I’ll share the basic skills of sushi making with you.”
Then I hit Publish.
I wasn’t expecting much. Tourism had only just begun to recover. My class had no reviews, no rating, no proof that it was worth anyone’s time. I went to bed thinking, “It’s okay if it takes a few weeks. Just being ready is already a victory.”
The First Reservation
The very next morning, January 31, I woke up, checked my phone, and stared at the screen:
“You have a new reservation request.”
Someone wanted to join on February 1—the exact day my lease officially began. It was a solo traveler: a nurse from Portland, taking a hard-earned vacation in Japan. Out of all the experiences in Tokyo, she had chosen this brand-new listing and this unknown host.
Of course, I hit Accept. Then I grabbed my jacket and headed straight for the market.
Fish, rice, vinegar, nori, wasabi—as I walked between the stalls, one thought repeated in my mind: “Tomorrow, for the first time, I’ll welcome a guest to make sushi in a place that is truly mine.”
Chapter 35: Opening the Door
Remembering Paolo
On the way back, carrying ingredients in both hands, a memory suddenly rose to the surface.
Years earlier, in my cramped old apartment, my guest Paolo from Los Angeles had opened my curtains wide and casually asked, “Have you ever been to Tsukiji?”
I hadn’t wanted to go. Back then, the fish market sounded old-fashioned and chaotic—the opposite of the sleek, modern Tokyo I thought tourists should see. But he insisted. So I followed him out the door.
That one invitation—Paolo opening my curtains and leading me into a world I hadn’t yet chosen—became the first step toward everything I do now.
Back then, I was the guest. He was the one opening the door to a new world. Now, as I passed my own front door and unlocked the one right next to it, I realized that this time, I was the one standing on the inside of the door.
A Knock of Trust
On February 1, I laid out the knives, lined up the fish neatly in the neta case, and checked the rice one last time. Then I waited.
At exactly the time we had agreed on, I heard a gentle knock.
For years, I had walked through office doors and train gates thinking, “I want to escape this life.” This door was different. It was a door I had chosen, in a space I had built out of second-hand furniture, late-night planning, and a decade of detours.
On the other side stood someone who had never met me—a nurse from Portland—who had still decided to trust that I could give her a meaningful day in Tokyo.
It wasn’t just a knock on wood and metal. It was a quiet knock of trust—trust that this small classroom would become a memory worth carrying home.
As I reached for the door, I felt everything behind me: my Couchsurfing nights, the exhausted mornings at EY, Paolo’s invitation to Tsukiji, three years of silently shouting “F*ck COVID-19!” behind a camera shutter, and one year of Saturdays at Tokyo Sushi Academy.
All those roads met here, in the simple act of opening a door and welcoming one guest into the world of Edomae sushi.
My Journey Had Just Begun
That day, I understood. Paolo had once opened a path for me, from my small room to Tsukiji. Now it was my turn to open a door for others—from their everyday lives into a journey of sushi, story, and connection.
My class was no longer a plan or a dream. As I opened the door and welcomed her in, I knew my journey had only just begun.
—END—