Outside in
Gaijin is the Japanese term for people like me.
I used to cringe when I heard it. It took years to overcome the shame of it. But these days I don’t mind it so much. Partly because it doesn’t really apply to me anymore. Mostly because I’ve come to accept it.
Gaijin means “foreigner” or “outsider”, but it really implies something more like “intruder”. Put more stereotypically, a gaijin is a white guy, clumsily bumbling through Japan, leaving a wake of social miscues and broken dishes behind him. It’s a term that’s meant to be derogatory – sometimes playfully, other times with menace. And even though I’ve lived in Japan for the better part of three decades, speak Japanese fluently, have opened two successful ramen shops in Tokyo, and am raising three half-Japanese kids, I’m still a gaijin. I can’t help it, just like I can’t help being head over heels in love with Japan.
I’ve spent most of my adulthood in Japan, and it continues to exert the same irresistible force on me. We live in New York now, where I own two ramen restaurants, and my family has a pleasant suburban American life, but we still think about Japan constantly.
Like most professional chefs, I consider Japanese food to be the pinnacle of cuisine. It’s what we want to eat all the time. We make pilgrimages to Japan to witness traditional Japanese cuisine and marvel at the way Japanese cooks absorb and incorporate foreign influence. The Japanese own sushi, ramen, soba, udon, tempura, yakitori, kaiseki, kappo, and izakaya, but they also bake amazing pastries and produce some of the world’s finest French and Italian dining. At restaurants and bars, you’re as likely to drink a striking, hard-to-find natural wine as an ultra-refined sake. The high end of dining in
