The man snipped a leg off one of the crabs on display with a pair of scissors and plunked it into Hoshihara’s palm.
“Come on over, you two,” he said to me and Ushio. “There’s plenty to go around.”
“O-okay, thanks,” I replied hesitantly. We walked up and held out our hands. Common etiquette dictated that it was impolite not to buy anything after you’d been given a sample, so I couldn’t help but be a little on guard—though I was fairly certain we didn’t have to worry too much about that, since we were technically still kids. Pulling the crab meat out from where the man had made an incision in the husk, we each took a bite.
“Oh, wow!” said Hoshihara, her face aglow. “That’s really good!”
She wasn’t wrong. The elastic texture and slight sweetness made me immediately start salivating for more. I could feel my hunger growing exponentially.
“Ah ha ha! Glad to hear it, little lady,” said the man. “If you want, I’ve got plenty of other tasty things you’re welcome to have a sample of inside.”
“Wait, you mean it?!”
Like a moth to a flame, Hoshihara tottered after the man into the store’s interior.
“Uh, should we really be letting her do this…?” I asked.
“We’d better go in after her,” said Ushio.
The two of us followed Hoshihara inside and were greeted by a veritable cornucopia of undersea delights. The selection they had on display at the storefront had led me to believe they primarily dealt in crab, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Hoshihara was currently being given the rundown on everything they had in stock, receiving samples of each in turn. Before long, another store worker came over to offer her yet more things to have a taste of: salmon roe, shellfish, shredded crab meat, a shaved-off piece of tuna… And Hoshihara kept popping these offerings into her mouth and chomping them down one by one, like a nutcracker at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Amazingly, she at one point broke free from her food-induced hypnosis and seemed to briefly regain her senses, looking over at us in desperation.
“Wh-what do I do?!” she said. “They just keep giving me free samples!”
“Sounds like a good problem to have,” I said.
I could totally understand the shopkeeper’s perspective, though. Hoshihara was absolutely the type of girl you wanted to keep giving little treats to. But by now, I also felt like we were obligated to buy something from them, so I took a peek at what they had available. Unfortunately, everything was rather pricey—not prohibitively so, but we were on a tight budget. Perhaps it was about time we got out of here before they made her wash dishes to pay off her tab. Just as I was about to go and fetch Hoshihara, another shopworker came over and started talking to me.
“Wait a minute,” said the middle-aged woman. “Have you kids had lunch already?”
“No, not yet,” I replied. “But we were just trying to find a place to eat, actually…”
“See, I figured as much. All the restaurants around here are very touristy, so it’ll cost you a pretty penny if you want to eat anywhere nearby.”
Ohhh, okay. That makes sense… Hey, wait. No, it doesn’t.
I’d always had the impression that local street markets were places where people could buy up fresh seafood and produce on the cheap, not tourist traps. But that would definitely explain why everything here seemed to be a bit on the expensive side. Here I’d assumed I just wasn’t up-to-date on the market value of seafood.
“Here, let me recommend you a good place to eat that’s a lot more affordable,” said the woman. “It’s a bit of a trek from here, though.”
“You’d do that for us?”
“Well, of course! You’re here on a class trip or something, right? I want you kids to have fond memories of your time here in Hokkaido, not feel like you got ripped off!”
Dang… She was a good person.
Once the woman had given us directions, I went over and collected Hoshihara, and the three of us excused ourselves from the store.
“Thanks for coming in and grabbing me, you two. I was literally on the verge of caving and buying one of everything they gave me!”
“Hoshihara, please…” I said. “You’re gonna go bankrupt on day one at this rate.”
After about a ten-minute walk, we made it to the restaurant the shopworker had recommended. At first glance, it looked like just another fish market, and not the sort of place you could sit down and have a meal. As I pulled out my phone to make sure we had the right spot, Ushio pointed toward the back of the store.
“Looks like there’s a little dining area back there,” she said.
“Oh, really? Okay, let’s go check it out.”
The soles of our shoes squeaked against the slick floor as we headed to the back of the shop, which led into a cozy little dining area, as Ushio had said. It wasn’t packed with customers or anything, and it certainly wasn’t fancy in terms of decor, but everyone seemed to be more than happy chowing down on their plates of sashimi and grilled fish in silence. This appeared to be the place.
“Come on in,” said the old lady at the counter. “Have a seat wherever.”
We grabbed one of the tables nearby and sat down. The stools had clearly seen better days, and they were pretty uncomfortable to sit on now that the cushioning was almost completely worn away. I opened the handwritten menu and scanned the list of assorted sashimi platters and seafood rice bowls. I didn’t know what the going rate was for a good sashimi bowl, but I was pretty sure anything under 2,000 yen was a good deal. Probably.
Hoshihara flipped back and forth through the menu several times, mumbling to herself as though she couldn’t make up her mind. There weren’t any pictures, so it was a bit of a gamble no matter what you ordered.
“What are you gonna get, Ushio?” I asked.
“Mmm… I think I’ll get the salmon and scallop bowl. What about you?”
“Probably the whitebait bowl, I think. Nice and cheap.”
“You can afford to splurge a little more than that. We’re on vacation, remember? Why don’t you get something you actually want?”
“Urgh, I guess you’ve got a point… All right, then I’ll get this ‘Ocean’s Bounty’ one that’s got five different kinds of fish in it!”
“Ooh, nice. Looks like that’s the fanciest one they’ve got… Wait. Are you picking based purely on the price again?”
“No, of course not.” I turned to Hoshihara. “Made up your mind yet?”
“Mmmmm… Okay, nope! No more second-guessing! I’m gonna get the Ocean’s Bounty too!”
We called over the waiter to put our orders in, and they brought out our bowls in no time. All three of them were so filled to the brim with fish, they were practically overflowing. I wasn’t the type of guy who liked to take pictures of his food most of the time, yet even I couldn’t help but pull out my cell phone to take a commemorative snapshot of this meal. I looked over to see that Ushio and Hoshihara were doing little photoshoots of their own bowls as well.
“Look over this way, Ushio-chan!” said Hoshihara.
“Huh?” said Ushio. “Oh, uh… Okay…”
“Now say ‘cheese’!” Hoshihara snapped the pic. “Nice, I got a good one with both you and your bowl in it. I’ll text it to you later!”
“C-cool, thanks.”
“Okay, your turn, Kamiki-kun!”
Do people really take selfies with their food nowadays? Is that the new trend?
After having my picture taken by Hoshihara, I returned the favor and took one of her as well. It was a pretty cute photo: her holding her bowl up to her face with one hand while making a peace sign with the other, smiling from ear to ear. I kind of wanted to get it framed and hang it up in the classroom.
“All right, let’s eat!” she said.
Ushio and I clapped our hands together and prepared to dig in as well.
I dissolved a bit of wasabi into a little tray of soy sauce, dipped some sashimi into it, and shoveled the fish into my mouth along with a good helping of rice.
“Oh, man… Now that’s good!”
I could tell from just one bite that this was no ordinary sashimi. The fish was so much fresher than the prepackaged, store-bought sushi I always got that it didn’t even feel fair to compare the two. The sea urchin in particular was downright sublime—so much so that it made me wonder if the sticky, reddish-brown kind I was used to was imitation meat or something. Beside me, Ushio was over the moon as well.