Coffee and Toast in a Fish Market
This blog was originally published on April 21, 2016 on a different site. I will be importing a selected few to Medium — this is the first of them.
The outing was taking longer than expected. It was the penultimate day of our short trip to Japan and Prem, Malini, and I had left early for a quick visit to Tsukiji — one of Tokyo’s most famous (& oldest) fish markets. We had left the boys sleeping in our rental apartment under the care of Vanitha who was next door. The fish auction in Tsukiji is rather well known, but that happens in the wee hours of the morning — around 1:30am. We managed to get there around 6:45am with some rather vague goals of seeing them prep a large Tuna and just generally browse. Two hours, tops — that’s what I told myself.
But now it was past 8:30am and we had not managed to see or do anything special. I was getting pretty hungry too — we had left without any breakfast or even coffee. As we rushed past some shops, headed to a knife store that Prem was seeking, I caught glimpse of a tiny shop where I noticed a few people sitting around a wooden counter drinking coffee. Something about the scene caused me to stop and turn back — not least of which was the prospect of getting some coffee. When we got back to the shop entrance, we saw that it was indeed a small coffee place with six customers (4 guys and 2 gals) sitting around the counter. The person running the store appeared to be a rather elderly lady.
There were no more seats to be had. I figured we could just drink coffee standing outside and signaled the lady for 2 cups of coffee. She gave me a smile, but made no move to actually give us the coffee. After a couple of iterations of this, I realized that we would just have to wait for a seat to open up. Prem was ok to wait for a bit, but Malini was not. Not only does she not drink coffee, she was anxious to get back to the boys as well. To add to that, at least one of the customers was puffing away — and Malini has zero tolerance for cigarette smoke. Since I also wanted to wait, Malini decided to go off and browse on her own.
It was getting on 10 minutes now and none of the customers were showing signs of leaving. Indeed, they kept getting refills. As the minutes wore on, I was feeling guilty about delaying all of us. Just as I was ready to quit, Prem hands me a webpage to read on his phone. It is about the shop. Turns out, the coffee shop that I had stumbled upon was something of a legend in Tsukiji. The lady who was managing the store — single-handily grinding, brewing, serving, and cleaning — is a 90 year old grandmother, who has been running the store for over 60 years! She only opens the store a couple of days a week — 7am to 10am on Tuesdays and Saturdays and we just happened to be there on a Saturday morning. Now there was no question about leaving — we had to sit down and drink some coffee.
By now a line had formed itself behind us — clearly lots of folks knew about her. Eventually the two gals left and Prem and I were able to sit down. Grandma was definitely old school. She ground her beans in an ancient grinder, then measured the grounds into a cloth filter that was sitting atop a ceramic jug. Water was boiled in another ceramic jug and then poured into the cloth filter (yes! Pour-over coffee!!). The coffee cups were kept warm in a basin of hot water and you got condensed milk and sugar to add to the strong brew.
The only other thing she served were thick slices of toast, with a liberal dash of butter.
It was good, strong coffee and the toast was very welcome. Once we were seated we forgot all about the rather sizable crowd that had now gathered at the door. We sat in the amiable warmth of grandma Murata’s (that was her name) tiny coffee shop and sipped our coffee and munched on our toast. The four guys who had been there before us were all friends and at least one of them spoke decent English. At one point, he whipped out a flag and requested a group photo with the coffee lady and his buddies. They were members of a local soccer club and that was their club flag. The fondness they had for grandma was patently obvious even though she clearly had no idea who they were. At one point, the English speaker went, “The best part is her smile — it is so sweet!” And indeed, he was right. Malini was not to be denied and requested and was granted a photo with her. I had a feeling that grandma Murata reminded her of her own grandmother who had remained spry and active till her last days.
It turned out that we were luckier than we realized. As we were preparing to take leave (rather reluctantly), the soccer player says, “You know, her store is going to shut down in October.” Was she finally retiring, I queried? “No,” he replied “The whole market is being torn down and relocated. And she doesn’t want to move.” After 80 years of operating in this location, the entire Tsukiji market was being relocated to another site in Nov 2016, partly in preparation for the 2020 Olympics, but largely because the aging infrastructure in the current market was sorely inadequate.
As we said our goodbyes and walked off to other parts of the market, I reflected that whatever else we did or got in the rest of the visit, the early morning trip to Tsukiji had already been worth it.
Originally published at http://4kumars.blogspot.com.