Traveling the world helps you appreciate the tremendous cultural depth of Japanese cuisine

It wasn’t anything particularly noble I’m afraid! (laughs) I was desperate to get out of home, and a friend helped me to land a job at a French restaurant in a resort hotel at Atami. While I was working there I got talking with a French chef, and I also spent time studying at Italian and Japanese restaurants up in Tokyo. The more I learned about the world of food, the more I found myself captivated by it. And the restaurant industry is such a great way to meet interesting and different people who you normally wouldn’t come across. It really opened my eyes to the world in all its rich diversity, and it made me want to get out and discover things for myself.

It was hard when I first arrived in Spain, because I didn’t speak a word of Spanish! (laughs) I was thinking that I’d just start out at some local restaurant, so I asked around at a few places but nobody wanted to hire me. I eventually found a place that agreed to take me on, but they weren’t going to pay me anything. But you can’t live on no money, so before long I had to get a job working part-time at a Japanese restaurant. Then one day out of the blue, I was promoted to manager and I was in charge of the whole place! It was at about this time that I met Ferran Adria, the head chef at El Bulli. The first meal I had at El Bulli blew me away. As a chef, when you eat out you normally expect to have some idea of how your dish has been prepared, what ingredients have been used. But at El Bulli I couldn’t work it out at all?the food was that good! That was the moment that I knew I wanted to get a job at El Bulli.

European restaurants like to use local produce. Although El Bulli is in Barcelona, it’s on the coast slightly nearer to France. We would generally use seafood caught locally, and in the spring we’d get asparagus from the nearby mountains, for instance. Likewise in Japan we source our food locally, but we also have the benefit of ready access to fresh seasonal produce from all over the country. This is due in no small part to the excellent distribution systems we have here. The fact that we can get hold of delicious fresh produce from various parts of Japan, thanks to our great distribution system, opens up a whole world of new possibilities for our chefs.

I took part in a tea ceremony after I got back to Japan, and it had just as much impact on me as that first meal at El Bulli. In tea ceremony, the exquisite bowls and the carefully arranged flowers are an integral part of the culinary experience. Every component has its own meaning and significance, and the participants can appreciate this together without the need for words. It’s the same for the chakaiseki meal?the food itself harbors an unspoken message. I have a great reverence for the notion of close communication through the medium of food.

Japanese cuisine is characterized by a strong emphasis on using the best ingredients, especially seasonal produce where possible, and employing a variety of cooking techniques and flavors. Obviously this influences the approach of Japanese chefs. Once you get to the stage with Japanese cuisine that the meal conveys to you the intentions of the person who prepared it, I think that enhances the experience.