International Sushi Day. Linda Furiya, "Bento Box in the Heartland, My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America."

"Behind the bar stood three chefs. Each of their stations displayed thick white, pink, red, and white-striated fish fillets, tangles of octopus, and small plastic bowls holding bright orange fish roe the size of pinheads and pearls. After eating a yellowtail nigiri-zushi, a rectangular slab of yellowtail tuna atop vinegar rice, Mom fanned herself with the beverage menu and dabbed at the tears running down her face with a napkin. Concerned, I looked at Mom. 'Why are you crying?' I asked. ... 'Is it because you haven't eaten sushi in such a long time?' She choked with laughter when I said this, still unable to collect herself. Dad, listening in ... laughed too. 'She ate too much wasabi,' he said.

"I turned my focus to the tuna nigiri-zushi Dad ordered for me. Despite my deftness with chopsticks, the architecture of the rice bed and fish topping was awkward to grasp with my sticks. I flipped the entire piece into my dish of soy sauce. The tight ball of rice disintegrated in the dark liquid puddle. ... 'Try again,' the chef said to me in Japanese, with a wink. 'This time, use your fingers. Instead of dipping the whole thing in the soy sauce, turn it upside down and dip only the fish part. Not too much, though. You want to taste the fish.'

"l watched as Mom mixed soy sauce with the wasabi to produce a thick, green-black paste. ... 'Too strong and spicy for an eight-year-old,' Mom said when she noticed my mischievous interest in the spicy paste. ... Ignoring Mom's warning, I slipped my piece of sliced fish into her sauce while she was busy ordering ... . What's the big deal? I thought as I chewed the fish and rice. A few seconds later, heat prickled at the base of my throat and what felt like hot gas rose quickly into my sinuses, blasting them like dry heat from a radiator and triggering a flood of tears. ... But finally I received my payoff as the delicious marriage of tuna and mustard kicked in. After that episode, I was more respectful of wasabi, but with each visit to the sushi restaurant in the following years, I acquired a taste for the fish and radish paste combination that would eventually become a lifelong craving."