X NO SEI TO SHI: STEP 2
8. Restaurant Taiji

When I was in elementary school, the only thing I was interested in was food. Lately, it's very rare that an elementary school student is able to cook. That is to say, outside of being busy with lessons and cram school, nowadays mothers tell their kids that it's too dangerous and don't let them into the kitchen.

But food is something that if you don't practice at, you forget how to make it. Holding a kitchen knife by yourself, trying to flip a frying pan for the first time, learning to check how hot the fire is without hurting yourself...

I started making meat patties and pilaf in the kitchen when I was still in the lower grades at elementary school. Because now you can buy these things frozen, I've stopped making them, but even though back then I could only make pilaf, I had to learn to make it from start to finish, from cracking the egg open to adding in various ingredients.

By repeating this over and over, I became used to doing it.

By the time I was in 4th grade, I'd added enough to my repertoire so that periodically I would have friends over for "lunch parties." Beforehand, I'd make a lunch menu and lunch tickets, and sell them to friends at school for 50 yen.

At the time, I thought 50 yen was a lot of money, but my lunch tickets always sold out. Also, I gave free seconds, and I would always make at least 4 or 5 kinds of food.

On Saturdays, my friends who pick what they liked to eat and walk to my house with their lunch tickets. "Restaurant Taiji" was only open on weekends. I would serve meat patties, spaghetti, curry rice, pilaf, etc. When I received their lunch ticket, they would pick the kind of food they wanted to eat and I would serve the customer.

That was a kind of surreal "playing restaurant," a unique event. Because of that, my house was really the place to be on weekends, as expected. My food was valued so much that people would pay to eat it.