at the street threshold of a small Tanimachi temple — a low plaster wall to the right, the lacquered wooden gate open inward, morning incense smoke crossing the gap between wall and gate post at face height, the interior courtyard behind it unresolved in flat grey light — she has stopped just outside the gate — smell has arrived before she has seen anything; she is not entering, not retreating; she is held at the threshold
The handwriting on the menu was small and uneven, each fish name in a different size as though written in different moods, on different days. I pointed at the man next to me's plate. He glanced sideways, nodded once. That was the whole thing.
the top surface of the low temple wall, stone pores opened and darkened by drizzle, a single wet pine needle caught in a mortar joint
The sushi counter was standing only, eight people, a strip of pale wood worn smooth at the edge where hands rested. I put mine there too. The chef was fast without being theatrical about it — his hands moved and the fish arrived, and the fish was so clean it almost felt accusatory. Like everything I'd eaten before it had been apologizing for itself.
the worn edge of the pale wood counter, grain exposed where the finish has gone, one ceramic dish resting near the lip
I'd put on the blazer when the drizzle started, somewhere on Matsuyamachi-suji. The street had that compressed quality the grey light gives to old neighborhoods — the buildings pulling slightly toward each other, the pavement darkened and even. The drizzle wasn't enough to drive anyone inside. It was enough to make the stone smell like itself.
Tanimachi in the morning is a different city than Tanimachi later. Earlier I'd walked the long blocks where the temples sit behind low walls and the light, what there was of it, came in flat and without direction. The incense from one of the smaller ones reached the street before the gate did. That order — smell before sight — keeps happening here, on this trip, in this city. I don't know what to make of it except that Osaka has always worked this way. I'd just forgotten.
on a compressed mid-Meiji residential street in Tanimachi — low two-story timber-and-plaster shopfronts leaning slightly toward each other, pavement stone darkened to near-black from drizzle, a shallow drainage gutter along the left edge still running with thin clear water after rain has stopped — she has stopped walking; the gutter is running past her feet; she is looking down at it, not at the camera
After the sushi I stood outside for a few minutes. The drizzle had stopped. The gutter was still running.
the running gutter water, the pavement surface beside it still dark and wet, a smear of orange reflected light across the wet stone — the afterimage of the delivery bicycle's bag
A delivery bicycle went past with a thermal bag strapped to the back, moving too fast for the street, the orange of it briefly the only color.
on Matsuyamachi-suji — a narrow commercial street of low two-story buildings, shopfront shutters half-down in the grey mid-afternoon, pavement slick and reflecting the orange of a passing delivery bicycle thermal bag, the rest of the street colorless — the bicycle has just passed out of frame right; she has turned to watch it go; the orange reflection is already dissolving in the wet pavement
What she wore
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I wore the olive linen because Tanimachi in the morning doesn't want you to try too hard — and I wasn't going to.
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I put the blazer on when the drizzle started and kept it on because Matsuyamachi-suji is the kind of street that rewards looking like you've been here before.
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The silk blouse felt right for the sushi counter — not dressed up, just quieter. The kind of thing you wear when the food is going to do all the talking.