the sea urchin looks spongy yet it melts in my mouth surrounded by nori paper and cucumber slivers for crunch and fatty tuna high glossed with a special sauce that only Takahashi san knows the ingredients to and he paints it on with a brush and the coat drips over and around the flesh with such an erotic charge and a blowtorch creates glaze and crispens the fish placed on top a single bed of rice and served on a fresh banana leaf and it all started with monkfish liver pâté wrapped in sashimi no soy sauce necessary and i prefer to sniff rather than sip my sake now and it does the deed and wasabi is from a root and ground against shark skin but he uses a similar yet different texture for reasons that are beyond me and only seven customers allowed in the restaurant at a time and i watch him prepare each guest’s meal piece by piece and it is a massage for my eyes i feel so zen a calm inside just staring in silence at the way he slices the fat off of the fish meat with such exquisite precision a sacred act and it reminds me of rope sliding across silk stockings held around a slender thigh and ankle sushi and shibari it makes perfect sense and i bite down sink my teeth in deep and savor the flavor leaving a red lipstick kiss around the rim of the roll.