Volcanic Onion Rings, Lottery, and Life in a Japanese Restaurant

Okay, now this actually happened early in March five years ago. Going through my archives brought back memories, which led to a new piece of art as well, as you will see. Went to a Japanese restaurant and ordered a delicious filet mignon steak grilled up on the hibachi. Was amazed to see the chef create a volcano of onion rings, complete with smoke and flames rising with a steaming sizzle upwards across the restaurant.

The heat from the rising fire was so intense I thought my camera would melt. It sort of jumped around in my hands trying to focus on the light.

A wisp of hibachi smoke in jade green curled its way through the air, rich with the smell of delicious cooking. While this photo was taken years ago, I just came up with this particular rendering of it days ago. In reality, the atmosphere was smoky gray.

Now when you have hibachi cooking in a Japanese restaurant, they like to seat large groups at each table. Singles like me they simply add to an already-formed group of people.

The unknown man next to me was friendly so we struck up a conversation. Never would have guessed, but he was a lottery winner ... of quite a large sum of money. Told me he'd been in a lottery pool of nine people at work and had split the money. Out of the nine, only one had retired from his job to live off his winnings. The other eight kept the normal rhythm of their day jobs and quietly continued going about their regular daily lives.

It might have been that everyone seated around the hibachi grill with me was a lottery winner or somehow connected except for me. That said, the fiery feast with flames leaping up was what attracted the most attention on the surface, and everyone liked it that way. To merely enjoy the simple things of life.