James Valcke

For fifty eight years, my boss in Tokyo believed that beef should be sliced as thin as paper. In Japan, we cook thin meat for four seconds in boiling broth. That is our way. Then last month, the YouTube algorithm showed Director Sato a video of a man in Texas smoking a brisket. It changed his life. On Monday morning, he called me to his desk. His eyes were bloodshot. "Have you seen this?" he whispered, turning his monitor toward me. "The American pitmaster does not sleep for sixteen hours. He sits by the fire in the dark. He guards the meat like a castle." I said, "Sir, it is just a barbecue." He slammed his hand on the desk. "This is not cooking," he said. "This is a vigil." Last Saturday was our annual company picnic by the river in Kanagawa. Normally, we grill thin meat and yakisoba for two hours and go home at 2:00 PM. I arrived at 9:30 AM to help set up. Director Sato was already there. I want to be accurate here: he had been sitting in a folding chair since 10:00 PM on Friday night. He was wearing a towel around his head and staring at a massive black barrel smoker he had imported from Oklahoma. Inside I said: THIS MAN HAS ABANDONED CORPORATE LIFE FOR THE SMOKE. When we tried to help him, he held up a pair of metal tongs and clicked them twice. "Step back," he said calmly. "The stall has begun. Nobody opens the lid." Twelve Japanese accountants stood in complete silence around a barrel for four more hours. Nobody dared to eat a single noodle until he gave the signal. At 1:45 PM, he sliced the meat. It fell apart on the cutting board. My boss looked at the pink smoke ring, nodded once, and wiped a single tear from his cheek. He has already submitted an official budget request for a trailer smoker for next fiscal year.