Then you bat your eyelashes at the Japanese-trained chef and say, “Ah-ji Shi, make me a little something to eat. Whatever you feel like.” And then you wait for the slime to start. I’ve had more texture in the two times I’ve been there than in my entire previous sushi-eating life put together. You come with your friends and Ah-ji Shi makes as many pieces for you as there are of you, pretending not to pay attention to the way you ooh and ahh at him cutting the fish and putting it together or exclaim at some particularly bizarre or delicious choice (Shi is master, as in skilled workman and teacher; and Ah is the way to make a Taiwanese diminutive). But you can’t pretend not to pay attention to him: as he nears completion of each batch, you hold the plate up to where his hand will go when he’s done and reaches just slightly over the fish-guard to plop the pieces down for you. As you eat you can ask him what it is he’s made you even though it’s clear to all that you will never remember the names, not even usually if you are not a foreigner—unless it’s something like black tuna, which makes you laugh at yourself to realize that of course the thing you feel like you could eat every day is also the most expensive of the bunch. According to Jennifer, Ah-ji Shi, being of an older generation and Japanese trained, totally eats up eyelash-batting girls who ooh and ahh and ask him to explain the food; and he has apparently rewarded her with slightly lowered costs for particularly good performances. Nothing has a price on it, he just makes stuff until you get full and tell him to stop and then he tells you how much it is. It’s always a lot; but it’s always presumably also a lot less than it would have been if you weren’t standing next to frozen fish heads and bumping up again styrofoam boxes in the middle of a market.

Duly relieved of our cash, we betook our loaded bellies around the market for a while, checking out the fish in a very foreignerly fashion.