We were walking along the streets of the city, and frankly, I was amazed. Back home, I always wanted to visit Japan, mostly to watch sumo wrestling, but also for the food. Also, just because, well, Japan was kinda cool. I don’t mean to sound like too much of a weeb, and in my defense, I was never too into anime or anything like that. Still, the aesthetic and culture were mostly cool.
The city was bustling and busy. Large buildings everywhere and businesses and shops and restaurants. Honestly, it felt more like a busy modern-day city back home than you’d expect a city in a medieval time period to be. The streets, though, were much narrower than you’d expect from a modern-day city. I could easily see why the guard captain didn’t let me bring my wagon in here. It would have been worse than me trying to drive around through some of those smaller towns in New England.
The neat thing, I thought, was all the different people. You could see the merchants in their stalls trying to sell their various goods. There were peasants and beggars, albeit they usually stayed off to the sides and their numbers were small, I noticed. You saw old men pulling or pushing hand carts dressed as farmers moving around to get wherever they were going to have to go.
This was also something I didn’t particularly like, though as well. It was neat seeing all the different classes of people, but there were so many people. I became a truck driver because I didn’t really like people, and large groups of people even less. This was like a nightmare and I had to fight to keep my anxiety under control. I wasn’t really a super anxious person anyway, but sometimes in sizeable crowds… I pushed the thoughts from my head and had Betsy wait a moment for me to get some food at a nearby stall.
We had finally sated our hunger, and I was carrying some grilled meat on sticks. I had a few of them and was taking bites here and there. To get Betsy a treat, I found a man selling roasted nuts. I didn’t think ox ate nuts, but when I asked if she wanted them, she nodded at me, and she seemed to enjoy them as I fed them to her.
We saw new classes of people as we walked further into the city. I had seen a few people wearing the cultivator robes. Not many, but there were a few. There were also surefire signs of the rich as I got closer. The roads got a little wider, and the kimono became the more prevalent choice of clothing outside of the cultivators. The women wore bright flashy colors and some of them had the white painted faces of what I assumed were geishas.
Eventually, I walked up to a random building that a woman was standing out in front of to ask her for directions.
“Do you know where Karyu Teahouse is?” I asked innocently. “I think I got a little turned around.”
The woman was beautiful. The tanned skin and jet black hair with plump red lips and bright green eyes. She had on a kimono that was probably a little shorter than was customary that had gold trim and intricate designs. She gave me a mischievous grin and opened the door she was standing next to.
“You don’t want that stuffy, boring place, trust me sir cultivator. We can make you feel more than cozy right here,” she said with a wink and a grin on those red lips.
My eyes opened wide. “Oh, uh, no… I’m trying to.. Uh…” I stumbled over my words when I realized what the place was and I took a few steps back until I tripped down the couple of stairs to the little patio area the establishment had.
When I stood, the woman was still standing there with the door open. “No one will think less of you. Your secret is safe with us,” she said, still with that coy smile.
“Oh, no thank you though ma’am,” I said and headed back in the direction me and Betsy had originally come from. It took me a few minutes to realize Betsy wasn’t following me and I realized I had gone the wrong way. When I got back to Betsy, I could feel her laughing at me.
A quick look up to the door and the woman was gone. She must have retreated inside when she realized I would not be a paying customer. I headed the direction we were originally going and could still feel Betsy laughing at me.
“I never got any lot lizards back home. I will not get any….” What did they call them here? “Courtesans while I’m here,” I muttered.
As we walked, the businesses seemed to disperse, and everything seemed more like manors and large houses.
“Oh, we must be getting into the nice part of town,” I said to Betsy, who just bellowed in response.
“Does this mean we’re close?” I squinted and looked around. “Why aren’t there any road signs or something? Can part of my cultivation path be just knowing where things are?” I sighed.
Even the crowds had died down in this section of the town. Noise probably goes against the HOA.
I finally see some movement after standing there, just looking around like an idiot. There was a carriage being pulled by a horse heading past where I was standing. “Well, how come he gets to ride?” I idly asked Betsy and shrugged. “Let’s follow him. Maybe they’ll lead us somewhere with more people.”
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She nodded her head, and we picked up our pace to a slow jog. The old man that was the driver wasn’t pressing the horses, so it was easy for us to keep pace with him. We stayed far enough back to not draw attention to ourselves. Well, no more attention than an ox with crates tied to its sides and a dude running alongside it could bring.
It was a short jog, and we stopped when the carriage did. The building the carriage stopped at was a small building that was set back on a little patch of land. There was a small pond by what I assumed was the front door with a fountain. I watched and waited to see what happened when I suddenly felt like a creep.
WHY ARE THERE NO SIGNS?!
A large man stepped out from the carriage wearing a deep blue kimono and had a purple obi. He slicked his hair back into a chonmage. I gaped and tapped Betsy repeatedly in excitement. In response, she gave an annoyed bellow, which caused the assumed sumo wrestler to look over at us.
I gave a little wave, and he gave a little wave in return. I closed the gap and ran over to him, and he watched me with a confused expression.
The man was large, over six feet, if I had to guess, and judging from the barrel the man held under his kimono was somewhere around 400 pounds? I blinked and smiled up at him. He just looked at me with a wide smile and watched me behind thick rimmed black glasses. He looked friendly enough and honestly, he kind of looked like one of the wrestlers I really like to watch back home.
“Sorry, hi, hello,” I said nervously. I wasn’t going to be a nerd or a fanboy about this. “Sorry, excuse me, is this the Karyu Teahouse?”
It took Betsy a minute to catch up since I ran away from her, but when she showed up, the large man looked at us even more confused.
“It is, but usually farmers and such normally stay…” he had said while he pointed, but I interrupted, waving my hands.
“Oh, sorry, no. I’m delivering,” I said as I patted my trusty ox that had the crates tied around her. Then, for good measure, I clasped my hands together and bowed to the man.
He nodded in understanding. “Oh. Well, yes, you’re at the right place. You’re a cultivator too, huh? Well, come on in, let’s see if we can get you squared away. The uh, the ox should probably wait outside though,” he said with a smile before he turned and opened the door to walk into the teahouse.
I nodded and Betsy bellowed as she stepped back. I looked at her and nodded and reached into a pocket and gave her some more peanuts to munch on while I got the lay of the land.
“Oh Nishikigi! Welcome back, welcome back.”
I paused and looked back at Betsy with an open mouth. ‘It’s Nishikigi?!’ I mouthed it to her, and she stared at me.
“Mama-san, I seem to have found someone looking for your lovely establishment. He said he has a delivery. Oh, here he comes,” Nishikigi said as I walked in the middle of him talking.
“Hello, yes,” I looked around a little for who Nishikigi was speaking with.
The inside of the teahouse was immaculate. There were short tables placed around the room, mostly close to the walls, but there was one long one in the middle of the room. Only two of the tables had customers sitting at them on large overstuffed pillows, enjoying tea and snacks. The walls had beautiful water paintings on them and there were some paper lanterns that hung down from the ceiling that were currently unlit. The windows high on the walls near the ceilings let in plenty of light for the time being.
I looked at… seriously, did he call her mama-san? Mama-San with a smile. “Hello, my name is Maikeru and I have a delivery from Hirasuke in Meguro,” I explained.
The older woman’s eyes went wide. She was a small older woman with only a few streaks of gray in her jet black hair. She wore her hair down and loose, and her kimono was more subdued in color than those of the women I’d seen in the streets. Honestly, she just gave off a calming presence. This whole place did.
“You brought me…” she smiled widely. “Oh, how excellent? We’ve been waiting. Bring them, will you? I’ll show you where to put them,” she instructed.
I nodded my head and told her I’d be right back. Nishikigi, to my surprise, was following me outside to help. Two trips, each with crates, and we stacked them in what looked like a small kitchen off the side of the dining room. While we walked through the teahouse and brought in the crates, there were a few petite women who roamed around and stayed clear of us as they served the couple of tables of patrons.
The women looked a little more proper than the mama-san. They had their hair done up and had light makeup that only enhanced their natural beauty. They wore ornate jewelry, but not excessively. Just enough to show they were in positions that deemed it mandatory, but not enough to be gauche. The kimonos they wore were the same calming colors as the mama-san’s, though.
Once I and Nishikigi were standing back in the entryway to the teahouse, one server walked up and escorted him to a table in the corner. When I thanked the sumotori for the help, he waved it off and chuckled a little. “Many hands make light work,” he said before he went and sat down.
I looked at Mama-san and smiled, and she went behind the counter that sat in the entryway. “So,” she said simply, and I heard some rustling around.
It only took a minute, and she set down a few golden coins on the counter in front of me. “This is about what I owe you, correct?” She said with a smile.
My eyes got wide, and I reached and tucked the money away. “Yes Mama-San, thank you,” I said with a bow.
“Did you want to have some tea before you go?” she asked me and held an arm out back towards the restaurant in an attempt to take me to a table. “You could sit with the yokozuna.”
NISHIKIGI WAS THE YOKOZUNA?!
I stared at her dumbly, unsure of what to say.
“I mean, I’d have to ask his permission, of course. Nishikigi is a wonderful man, though, very kind,” she said quickly.
As of this posting there's a bunch of chapters and bonus stuff on the
That includes a bonus chapter that comes after this one called "Tea with a Yokozuna."
Hiroshi, Tale of a Sumotori
You can also buy the entire pre-published version on Patreon and get the published copy once it's ready.
Have you read Hiroshi, Tale of a Sumotori?
