arigatoo, for not noticing...

Joss Café & Sushi Bar might be my favorite restaurant. I am rarely so linear as to have favorite anythings, but Joss is certainly in the favored echelon. In fact, I recently gave it a 5/5 Yelp rating. (Yelp.com--log in, rate places, and see what other people think before you go.) I’m not sure about the 5/5. Nothing really deserves an unqualified 5. Joss, after all, is a bit cramped inside, and has the tiniest of entryways such that there’s absolutely no place to wait except out on the sidewalk if there’s not a table ready. But it’s cozy and charming, and the rustic French Provincial interior of the main dining area (from the days when the space housed La Crêpe Normande) translates pretty well into Japanese rustic, with the addition of a few samurai masks and a couple of Good Luck Kitties.

Still, I always feel like it’s pushing things a bit to assign 5s. I think part of the problem is, a 5 point scale just doesn’t allow for fine-tuning. Hence, I arbitrarily decided that if Joss--at the moment--is hovering at the top of my list, and the top of my list should be 5s, then Joss must be a 5. Or something. Scale subject to later adjustment, all rights reserved, etc.

Jeff and I ate lunch there yesterday. It was a more indulgent choice than our usual lunch, given that we usually order at a counter, choose a seat, and pay half as much. But I wanted a cupcake. And right across Main Street from Joss is “Nostalgia Cupcakes” where they sell...cupcakes. Honestly, I don’t know why they’re still in business. But the cupcakes are yummy.

I ate my usual teriyaki tofu and avocado salad, and drank a pot of oolong tea, while Jeff managed to keep his chopsticks right-side up and polish off a grilled salmon salad. Then I paid. You know how sometimes waitpeople will scribble “thanks, Betsi!” with a smily-face or something on the credit card receipt? Well, sometimes I’m inspired to write back, and yesterday I did, in Japanese, although I’m sure our waitress (whose name wasn’t Betsi, but was certainly something typically American) doesn’t read Japanese. So maybe she ignored what I wrote and never checked with one of the Japanese chefs for a translation. I can only hope. Because that way, no one will ever notice that I conjugated “oishii” wrong.

Here’s what I wrote: Gochisoosama. Oishii deshita! (Only it looked like this: ごちそうさま。おいしいでした！) Here’s what’s really dumb. This is exactly what I’ve been busily drilling myself on in semester 3 of Japanese. Conjugating adjectives. And I know perfectly well that oishii, being an “i” adjective, in past tense should be “oishikatta desu,” only--unfortunately--this did not dawn on me until I was halfway home.

Oh yes...here is a rough translation of what that means: “Thank you for the meal. It was delicious! I am a dumb American who cannot conjugate delicious!”

I do not score a 5/5. Not yesterday, anyway.