Restaurant Yakuza

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Restaurant Yakuza

 

 It's a bright, sunny Sunday as the crowd of Asian tourists makes their way from the buses parallel parked along the smallish street, overlooking the blooming hibiscus in the Mexican heat. The smells of sweat and taco’s drifting to meet their alien nostrils as a group of boys varying in ages of late teens to early twenties, garbed in baggy hoodies and jeans oh-so-low you wonder if even a belt could possibly help them, look on, speaking in low amusing voices at how stupid it is that the fact of tourists exist, all of course in slang. The wary looks cast by many of the older tourists most likely wondering about the chances of “losing” their wallets burning with cash & credit cards or the classic cameras that were out of date when they first appeared and now are all the rage 15 years later.

 

A younger generation of the crowd look about as if hoping to spot some movie celebrity if but for a moment, walking down the dusty sidewalks of our humble San Diego community, but with no lucky spotting they start to head slowly into what would appear as a typical Chinese restaurant with its big glass double doors, painted yellow & blue sign, so loud that not even the mariachi band in all its splendor, down the street at such another establishment, could possibly tear your attention away for even a moment.

 

One hangs back from following the crowd who without a doubt contains his mother & father. He balances on what might have been a bike rack at some point, but instead resembles a bad piping job a plumber would be envious of.

Lighting up a cigarette and taking a long drag, you can’t help but wonder if he’s trying shed off the jet lag or the constant chatter of the group as he exhales.

 

As the smoke hangs for a moment in the stiff heat, I glance off to the side of the building as a cook comes out for a break before the endless orders begin flowing and it would be a while before he can have his small dose of nicotine/heaven.

Sitting on an old plastic crate, shoulders slumped as his smoke too, hangs still above him without a breeze to carry it away.

The young man, finally breaking away from his small quiet moment tosses the end of his cigarette, but stands and stretches his wiry limbs and shakes head out of the fog of tiredness and looks over to where I’m perched on a bus bench, with a small smile makes his way through the double glass doors and is greeted by the typical small hostess and that adorable painting of a panda. His smile reminding me of old Japanese yakuza movies, where there was almost a hint longing to be somewhere else, doing anything else but this.

 

The cook still sitting on his plastic crate around the building, looking more and more as if he could do with a cat nap and a cold beer, answers his dishwasher as he comes out almost pleading with him in rapid Chinese, worrying no doubt about what would happen if the cooking fell into his soap wrinkled hands. Taking a long lasting drag he makes his way back inside but not before flicking his end into the tiny car lot next door. The boys from earlier have disappeared behind the chain link fence. Rushing back to apartments equipped with air conditioning and cable. The street goes back to the hum of passing cars and dust flying in the miserable heat as I continue to watch the yakuza restaurant & with the mariachi band as background music smiling on this typical bright, Sunday morning.