The Ramen King and I Read Online Free PDF Page B

what a post is,” Junko replied, “and I don’t know what a site is, but can you just erase it?”
    “I can’t. It’s impossible.”
    Junko made a clicking noise with her tongue. “Then you’ll have to apologize to Tetsuo.”
    I felt shame for telling the world that I was close to them. (Even though I posted using a pseudonym, people on Chowhound knew me from the annual Chowhound picnic in Golden Gate Park.) But I was unable to admit that to myself, let alone to Junko.
    “Why should I apologize? I mean, Tetsuo never said the information was top secret.”
    Junko paused, and then she said the thing that, when I think about it, sometimes makes me cry.
    “Hakata Andy, maybe you shouldn’t come back.”
     
     
     
    I told myself that I would just go to other sushi restaurants, and for a long time I wandered from sushi bar to sushi bar. I numbed out on sake bombs and inside-out caterpillar rolls. I sat at the kinds of sushi counters where multiple non-Japanese sushi chefs work in assembly lines, and frat-boy customers toast them with an endless supply of drinks.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Dear Momofuku,
     
    Harue visited me in Philadelphia the next fall. I showed her around the University of Pennsylvania, and she swooned over the Ivy League-ness of the place. She was excited to see firsthand the Gothic architecture and preppy outfits she knew from Japanese fashion magazines. I promised to remain faithful when she went back to Japan, but I broke the promise several weeks later.
    A classmate named Nancy invited me to spend New Year’s Eve with her and a group of her friends in Manhattan, and I met them for dinner at a Mexican restaurant in the East Village. It wasn’t so much her friend Kim’s long blond hair or athletic figure that I found irresistible, but the way that she bit her lower lip while talking to me. She said she was a staff writer for an entertainment magazine, and on the side she was composing lyrics to a musical. I asked why she wasn’t eating anything, and Kim explained that she was planning to run the five-kilometer race in Central Park at midnight. My belly was full of beer and beans and it had been more than ten years since my days as a middling member of my high school’s cross-country team, but I wanted so much to be near her that I proposed to the group that we all run the race. It was a bitterly cold night, but all seven of them were up for it. Kim went home to change into her running outfit while I borrowed sneakers and leggings from another of Nancy’s friends. As we gathered again at the starting line, I recalled my high school coach’s moti vational advice, which was to imagine that the greatest thing in life was waiting for you at the finish line. In eleventh grade, I recorded my personal best for five kilometers while imagining a bowl of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese ( with canned Cheez Whiz, not powdered ) at the finish line, but during the New Year’s Eve race, right from when the starting gun sounded, I imagined Kim there.
    Kim ran in the park every day, but I somehow managed to keep her in my sights. I pursued her down the East Side, and on the last turn, the one near Tavern on the Green, I pulled even. She saw me and smiled, biting her lower lip again. We crossed the finish line together, and a moment later I kissed her. In the future I imagined this time, Kim would write articles and musicals, and I would wear a suit and take a high-paying position in finance. We would run together in the park and have athletic children.
    “You move fast,” she said.
    Momofuku, as I write these letters to you, I am remembering more details. For instance, I remember that when Kim visited me on the weekends in Philadelphia, I would turn off the ringer on my phone so it went straight to voice mail in case Harue called from Tokyo. I remember e-mailing Harue as if nothing had changed. Once, when I was staying at Kim’s apartment in New York, we went running together in Central Park.
    “What’s