Chapter 7: A Daughter's Question
From Tanegashima to the World — Chapter 7 of 10
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Chapter 7: A Daughter’s Question
The pandemic arrived and took almost everything with it.
The Sushi Counter
I remember standing in our restaurant looking at the sushi counter — the polished wood, the careful arrangement, the space designed for people to sit and be present with their meal.
It was covered in takeaway containers.
Not because we had given up. Because that was the only way to keep going. Dine-in was gone. Takeaway was what remained.
And so we made takeaway. Every day. As well as we possibly could.
What Catering Taught Me
To survive, we expanded into catering. Large orders, made in a central kitchen, distributed across the city.
I had done catering before — embassy events, the Opera House, corporate lunches. But this was different in scale and in rhythm.
We were cooking large volumes of the same dish, efficiently, in one place, and delivering it to many people across many locations.
One day, standing in the kitchen watching this operation run, something clicked.
This is the McDonald’s model.
Not the menu. Not the brand. The structural logic: make it once, well, in a centralised location, and get it to as many people as possible.
McDonald’s had not built the world’s largest food chain because their burgers were the best. They had built it because their system — centralised production, consistent execution, wide distribution — was the most effective ever designed.
And here I was, running essentially the same logic, with Japanese food, out of necessity.
The question I had carried since California — what if someone made real Japanese food with that kind of reach? — suddenly felt not just possible, but obvious.
My Daughter’s Question
And then one evening, my daughter came home from a dance competition.
It was 9pm. She was hungry and tired. And she said something I have not stopped thinking about since:
“Dad, there’s nowhere to go. Everything good is too expensive or already closed. There’s no fast food that’s actually healthy that I can actually afford.”
She was not complaining. She was describing a gap in the world.
I thought about what she was actually saying.
She wanted something fast — because it was 9pm and she was exhausted. She wanted something affordable — because she was 17 and she did not have much money. She wanted something actually good — because she had grown up in our family and she knew the difference.
I looked at the market through her eyes.
Under $10: the fast food chains. Speed, yes. Affordability, yes. Quality — not really. Additive-free — no.
$15–25: the casual dining restaurants. Quality, sometimes. But slow. And expensive for a tired 17-year-old at 9pm.
The gap between those two worlds — the $10–15 range where you could be both fast and honest — was completely empty.
No one had ever tried to fill it with Japanese food.
Otogo
The pieces came together quickly after that.
The onigiri — the humblest, most portable, most nourishing object in Japanese food culture. Rice, a small amount of filling, a sheet of seaweed. Simple to the point of being invisible, if you have never thought about it. But if you understand rice, you know there is nothing simple about it.
The machines — the lesson from Yachiyo. Quality that lives in the system, not in any single chef. Consistent. Scalable. Trainable.
The price point — the same as a McDonald’s combo. Not because we wanted to compete with McDonald’s on their terms, but because that was where my daughter was, and where most people actually live when they are hungry and have 10 minutes.
The standard — additive-free. Completely. Not because it was a marketing decision, but because anything less would mean I was not serious.
And the speed — 90 seconds. Fast enough to sit beside any fast food option in the world.
What We Are Building
Otogo opened in Ultimo in 2023. The CBD location followed.
We have had days that reminded me of Yachiyo’s opening — a single table, the work of being known just beginning. We have had days that reminded me of the catering operation — the machine running well, the system doing what it was designed to do.
We are still early.
But the question I asked at 17, standing in a McDonald’s in California, is still the one I am trying to answer:
What if someone made real Japanese food with that kind of reach?
We are finding out.
小さき者の、大きな旅。
A small beginning. A great journey.
An onigiri is a very small thing.
Rice. A filling. Seaweed. Three ingredients. Seconds to eat.
And yet — my father made them in a 150-seat restaurant on a small island. My mother thought about what they did for the body. Chef Abe taught me that the way the rice is cooked is a statement about who you are. My daughter reminded me that someone has to make them available, at 9pm, for people who are hungry and cannot afford to wait.
Otogo is my answer to all of those things at once.
Thank you for reading this far.
The journey continues.
Continue to Chapter 8: The Vision Found at the Bottom of the Sea →