Rainfall

obscure and ancient, not just behind the bar but adorning shelves and furniture throughout the room, as well. Eclectic Americana like an old Schwinn bicycle suspended from the back wall, an ancient black rotary telephone that must have weighed ten pounds, a framed photograph of President Kennedy. As a complement to his whiskey-only policy, Satoh-san plays nothing but jazz, and the sounds of singer/poet Kurt Elling issued warm and wry from the Marantz vacuum-tube stereo in the back of the bar, accompanied by the low murmur of conversation and muffled laughter.

    “I . . . love this place!” Midori whispered to me in English as we sat down.

    “It’s great, isn’t it?” I said, pleased that she appreciated it. “Satoh-san is a former
sarariman
who got out of the rat race. He loves whiskey and jazz, and saved every yen he could until he was able to open this place ten years ago. I think it’s the best bar in Japan.”

    Satoh-san strolled over, and I introduced Midori. “Ah, of course!” he exclaimed in Japanese. He reached under the bar, shuffling things around until he found what he was looking for: a copy of Midori’s CD. Midori had to beg him not to play it.

    “What do you recommend tonight?” I asked him. Satoh-san makes four pilgrimages a year to Scotland and has introduced me to malts that are available almost nowhere else in Japan.

    “How many drinks?” he asked. If the answer were several, he would conduct a tasting, starting with something light from the Lowlands and progressing to the iodine tang of the Islay malts.

    “Just one, I think,” I responded. I glanced at Midori, who nodded her head.

    “Subtle? Strong?”

    I glanced at Midori again, who said, “Strong.”

    Satoh-san smiled. “Strong” was clearly the answer that he was hoping for, and I knew he had something special in mind. He turned and took a clear glass bottle from in front of the mirror behind the bar, then held it before us. “This is a forty-year-old Ardbeg,” he explained. “From the south shore of Islay. Very rare. I keep it in a plain bottle because anyone who recognized it might try to steal it.”

    He took out two immaculate tumblers and placed them before us. “Straight?” he asked, not knowing Midori’s preferences.

    “Hai,”
she answered, to Satoh-san’s relieved nod of approval. He carefully poured off two measures of the bronze liquid and recorked the bottle.

    “What makes this malt special is the balance of flavors — flavors that would ordinarily compete with or override one another,” he told us, his voice low and slightly grave. “There is peat, smoke, perfume, sherry, and the salt smell of the sea. It took forty years for this malt to realize the potential of its own character, just like a person. Please, enjoy.” He bowed and moved to the other end of the bar.

    “I’m almost afraid to drink it,” Midori said, smiling and raising the glass before her, watching the light turn the liquid to amber.

    “Satoh-san always provides a brief lecture on what you’re about to experience. It’s one of the best things about this place. He’s a student of single malts.”

    “Jaa, kanpai,”
she said, and we touched glasses and drank. She paused for a moment afterward, then said, “Wow, that is good. Like a caress.”

    “Like what your music sounds like.”

    She smiled and gave me one of her shoulder checks. “I enjoyed our conversation the other day at Tsuta,” she said. “I’d like to hear more about your experiences growing up in two worlds.”

    “I’m not sure how interesting a story that is.”

    “Tell it to me, and I’ll tell you if it’s interesting.”

    She was much more a listener than a talker, which would make my job of collecting operational intelligence more difficult.
Let’s just see where this goes
, I thought.

    “Home for me was a little town in upstate New York. My mother took me there after my father died so she could be close to her parents,” I said.

    “Did you spend any time in Japan after that?”

    “Some. During my junior year in high school, my father’s parents wrote to me about a new U.S./Japan high-school exchange program that would allow me to spend a semester at a Japanese high school. I was actually pretty homesick at the time and enrolled right away. So ultimately, I got to spend a semester at Saitama Gakuen.”

    “Just one semester? Your mother must have wanted you back.”

    “Part of her did. I think another part of her was