Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a movie about work. The sushi parts are about this old guy that runs a sushi restaurant in a subway. He wakes up every morning, tosses on clothes, and rides the subway to work. When he gets there he says hi to the crew and takes a tour of the place, adjusting a seat here and tweaking the menu there. Then he and his staff which consists of one of his sons at one location, another at a new location, and a few long time employees, start making sushi. And that's pretty much how the whole movie goes.
The reason other people thought the sushi joint was important enough to make a movie about is because of the award the restaurant was given. In the cooking world there is an award kind of like the video game equivalent of a 10/10 that sounds like a tire company's name. It's an honor that used to only be only bestowed on the best games, but now, ya know, lets not worry about that right now, suffice to say that in the cooking world the title still marks you as "unfuckwittable," to the point there even old french masters leave the laundry from time to time for a fishy pilgrimage.
The old sushi guy started work around seven years old giving his father a hand with his company, but the company went under and his father took off soon after. the sushi kid understood that he was on his own then, and did what kids do as kids, whatever the fuck he wanted, but later realized if he didn't do something to feed himself he was going to starve to death, so he took a look around at what he liked, and decided he liked sushi more than anything else, so he just started making sushi.
He didn't start out tire star worthy, but that was never what it was about for him. Everyday, he would gather the rice, slice the fish, select the additional ingredients based on their freshness. It got to the point where he did it so much he had little epiphanies about the process of sushi making, and integrated them into his service.
He noticed there was a peak time to serve every slice of fish, and that too many portions corrupted one another, so he began to serve them one at a time, when a customer came in he would watch them eat, and if a person was left handed he would place the next portion closer to the hand it would be easier for that person to use. Stuff like that. I'm not a big fan of sushi, but I am holding onto my judgment of sushi as a whole till I try his shit.
The Protoculture Mixtape V.67 Issue: People: California Roll
