A sliver of butter perched atop a mound of steaming rice garnished with a single drop of soy sauce was a taste that had quickly become an addiction for Rika. She’d used lashings of the same butter on her morning toast, too, and as a result the hundred grams of Échiré that she’d bought in the Marunouchi store had vanished in just a few days. In the

Diners, as a rule, are time machines; whether through the formica sheen of the nineteen-forties, the chromium optimism of the fifties, or the pastel geometries of the eighties, a diner traffics in nostalgia for past decades and past selves. The only era a diner should never reference is now.