It’s good he’s resting, you’ll think, because he has a long day of work ahead. You’ll get up from the futon without a sound, and walk light-footed across the tatami to the kitchen, and you’ll dress there so as not to tear Hiro and Takashi’s paper sleep. A perfect breakfast calls for fresh fish and the freshest of all is around the Tsukiji market.
You’ll take the train to Tsukiji for a perfect mackerel. There, every single one will look lovely to you. That blue reflection, the tiger stripes on black that is wet, always wet, like a recollection that never dries, a memory of the sea.
You will shut your eyes, and choose. You won’t allow yourself to be carried away entirely by what you see. You’ll travel back home with the perfect mackerel in a bag, hoping for no delays.
That would be a loss of freshness. A crack in the smoothness of your plans. Back home, you will slice the mackerel in half and salt it, so it retains the spirit of the sea.
You’ll leave the rice to soak, having washed your hands with that coconut soap Mariko gave you. How many Japanese women wash their face and hands in the morning with coconut soap? You will imagine a beach like the ones in travel-agent advertisements and focus your imagination up at the tips of the palm trees: you’ll see the coconuts, the ones they used for making the soap so that your hands could be soft this morning.
You will wish that something of this beach and this coconut whiteness might pass into the rice through your hands as you wash it and leave it to rest. The resting is important. To make the miso shiru, you will scent the water with small dried anchovies.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
