35 – The Empty Room Next Door
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 single piece of sush class is getting set gradually.
I knew, sooner or later, Japan would reopen.
Tourists would come back.
When that happened, I wanted to be ready.
But the one thing I still didn’t have yet
was a place to actually welcome my guests.
Back then, I was living in a small, slightly tired apartment building in the north of Tokyo.
Nothing fancy. Narrow hallway, no elevator.The kind of place you choose when you’re self-employed and every yen matters.
One day, I noticed the couple living there previously 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, when I opened my own door,
I could almost feel possibility leaking out from behind the other one.