The 81-Year-Old Tokyo Cook Who Says She Sells Smiles

Ask Fukuzawa Kazuko what her restaurant is really selling and she does not say the fried rice.

We sell smiles.

She is 81, turning 82 shortly, and she is the one at the wok. Sairaiken is a narrow neighbourhood Chinese diner in Ishiwara, Sumida ward, Tokyo — eight counter seats and a two-seat tatami nook, a red banner outside, a black rotary phone in the kitchen that still rings.

Asked where her energy comes from, she does not mention food or sleep. She says her white cook’s coat. And then she says something else, which is the reason this video is worth watching to the end.

What a machi-chūka actually is

If your idea of a Chinese restaurant in the West is a menu of regional specialities, a machi-chūka (町中華) is something else. It is the Japanese neighbourhood Chinese diner: a counter, a wok, and a laminated list of forty dishes that have been quietly Japanised over seventy years — fried rice, gyoza, ramen, sweet-and-sour pork, stir-fried liver and chives.

They are cheap, they are fast, and they are usually run by one family until that family stops. Which is why a video about an 81-year-old still working the wok is not really a food video.

Watch the video

From Amami Ōshima to a shop called Sairaiken

Kazuko is from Amami Ōshima, a subtropical island roughly 1,300 km southwest of Tokyo. Her explanation of how she ended up in Sumida is short:

All my siblings ran ramen shops called Sairaiken. When we finished high school, everyone went to Tokyo.

Sairaiken was not one restaurant. It was the name over several of them, run by her brothers and sisters. She joined straight out of school. Tokyo, she says, was what she had dreamed of — and it was hard.

The shop’s history comes from the landlord, who appears early in the video and has known her for 45 years.

She came about fifty years ago. Third generation of Sairaiken — her and her husband.

His recommendations are the ramen and the fried rice. “I like the ramen here. It isn’t heavy.” When there are leftover ingredients at closing, she cooks something with them and brings it round to his house — enough, he says, for breakfast, lunch and dinner the next day.

The prep is mostly about laying things out

Service starts at 11:30. Everything before that is the work of removing decisions from the dinner rush.

Prawns — egg white, potato starch, mixed through and into a container.

Liver — she calls it clean and fresh, breaks it down by hand, cuts it, then coats it the same way. That becomes the liver-and-chive stir-fry.

Peppers, cabbage, pork — green peppers julienned, cabbage rough-cut, pork in bite-sized pieces. Each goes straight into a tub and gets covered.

The most telling piece of prep is the atama — literally the “head” — the topping that goes on the five-ingredient fried rice. She cooks a wide sheet of egg, combines it with fish cake and the rest, and portions it onto a tray. When an order comes in, that part is already done.

This is the topping. If I don’t get the fish cake ready like this — we run this place with very few people, so it’s hard.

The rotary phone rings, the noren goes up

Near the end of prep, the black rotary phone on the wall rings. She takes the call, then carries the noren — the split cloth curtain that means a Japanese shop is open — outside and hangs it beside the red banner.

The video follows the evening service, from 17:30. By seven the counter is full of regulars.

The menu is standard machi-chūka. These are the prices shown on screen in the video (¥1,000 is roughly US$7 at recent rates).

Salt, MSG and pepper. Nothing else.

A customer orders the five-ingredient fried rice. Oil, rice, two eggs cracked straight in, and the wok starts moving. Asked what goes into it, her answer takes four seconds.

Only salt, MSG and pepper. Nothing else goes in.

She folds in the filling, adds the aromatics, finishes with pepper, and lays the pre-made topping across the top in a neat row. ¥1,000.

A customer on his third visit tries to explain why that works:

The salt level is just unreal. I’m completely hooked.

Another says almost the same thing in different words: “It isn’t a complicated seasoning, it’s simple — but there’s so much depth in it.”

The eggplant stir-fry, and the thing she won’t name

The dish both she and her regulars name first is the pork and eggplant stir-fry (¥900). Pork first, then green peppers and eggplant, then the seasonings. Partway through she shakes something else in.

Put this in and the taste is completely different.

She does not say what it is. The customer who gets the plate says the seasoning is firm enough to eat with rice, and then stops talking.

The gyoza are ¥300 for three, ¥500 for five. Lined up, water in, lid on to steam, water off, then oil — she waits for the crackle before she calls them done.

At the counter that evening there was also an unresolved argument about prawn mayo versus chilli prawn. A customer who had ordered the mayo last time and the chilli this time was asked which one won:

Honestly — it’s a tie. Joint first.

Her own recommendation is the rōsū-men (¥900): a thickened pork-and-pepper sauce over curly noodles in a clear broth, with the faint bitterness of green pepper cutting through it.

Malaysia, a TV personality, and two schoolboys

The regular at the counter that night had come from Malaysia. Bottled beer, gyoza, the eggplant stir-fry, fried rice. They poured for each other, drank, and the first mouthful got the only review that matters: “That’s good.”

High on the wall is a row of photographs of celebrities who have eaten there. The one named in the video is the actor and TV personality Sakagami Shinobu, who used to stop in on the way back from rehearsals at a nearby studio. There is also a passing mention that the shop “became machi-chūka champion on 3 March last year.”

Two high-school boys in uniform are regulars too — one orders the fried rice, one is loyal to the prawn mayo. Their school is nearby. When Kazuko is asked what the best part of the job is, this is what she picks:

Talking to the young couples. Telling them to come back. They’re like grandchildren — I’ve got a lot of grandchildren here.

When she travels, she brings back souvenirs for the people who eat at her counter. That night she was handing out sweets from Awaji Island.

She wants the white coat in the coffin

Eighty-one, turning eighty-two. Asked where the energy comes from, she does not talk about health.

The white coat. You become a different person.

Then she extends it further than the question asked for:

I’ve lived my whole life in this coat. I’ve told my children — when I die, make sure the white coat goes in the coffin with me.

Which is where the answer at the top of this piece comes from. Asked what the shop is really selling, she says smiles. Asked what she would say to the customers who keep coming:

Thank you, always. You help me. I get my energy from the customers. Please keep coming.

And, at the very end, her goal for the year:

I want to reach 82 in good health. I’ll keep going.

If you’re going

Hours, prices and menu are as shown in the video. Worth confirming before you go.

A note on etiquette: it is a small counter and one person is cooking. Order, eat, pay, leave — and if you can manage a word of thanks on the way out, that is the currency the place actually runs on.

The part text can’t carry

Everything above is the reporting. What it leaves out is what an 81-year-old’s wok work looks like.

The steam coming off the pan, the one-handed toss, the angle the liver leaves the oil at, and the rhythm of a conversation with a regular running underneath all of it. That does not survive being written down.

The fried rice starts at 17:06. The white coat comes up at 26:58. Watch those.