Recap

Yutaka is a salaryman living a monotonous life. His lunches are supermarket dishes with a homemade, giant onigiri. He eats it alone. His relationship with his family is strained enough that he can’t answer a simple text about visiting for his father’s birthday.

While eating lunch one day a young boy appears next to him on a playground bench. The kid cutes his way into eating Yutaka’s onigiri. His apologetic, much older brother appears and collects him.

Yutaka’s dinner is a repeat of lunch, and he still can’t answer that text.

The next day the brothers find Yutaka at the playground and apologize. The brothers quarrel over the older brother’s ability to make onigiri and convince Yutaka to come that weekend and demonstrate his recipe.

Yutaka agrees because he’s afraid of the older brother.

On his way there he meets their widowed father and finally gets the brother’s names. The older one is Minoru, the younger Tane. He quickly diagnoses a dirty rice cooker and yellow rice (ew) as part of their onigiri flavor problem, and makes rice in a clay pot/donabe. As they cook, Minoru envies Yutaka’s single life and Yutaka envies Minoru’s noisier one.

Yutaka feeds both the brothers rice and demonstrates how to make his giant onigiri with various fillings. Tane is already calling him “Yukata”. Yutaka tries to leave once they have a pile of onigiri. He doesn’t like eating in front of others because as a child his older brother bullied him about his eating.

But Minoru holds out a giant onigiri and Yutaka obediently takes a bite. He stays to eat with them.

On his way out, Minoru invites him to come again – because Tane had so much fun. Of course. Yutaka hesitantly agrees.

Going to bed, Yutaka notes how warm he feels after sharing a meal. The next day even one of his coworkers notices his lifted spirits as he talks on the phone with Tane about their food plans.

Thoughts

The fact that Yutaka didn’t get rice on his face for Minoru to wipe off and eat himself should be the first clue that this isn’t a straight-up BL. Also, if you’re on the fence about whether to watch this show or not this episode is a good test. If you found this episode too slow, with not enough romance, that’s probably how you’ll feel about the whole show.

If you’ve read my Moonlight Chicken recaps though, you know I like food and slow, slice-of-life shows. So here we go.

In this episode, we’re introduced to Yutaka and his dull life, and already see how the brothers start to tug him out of it. We get hints of the brother’s own sad history with the widowed father. Even without eating food off each other’s faces, Minoru holding the onigiri out for Yutaka to eat is pretty sweet. 

True to the rest of the show, our characters are making everyday food instead of elaborate meals. I love fancy food but it’s nice to see characters enjoying the simple pleasure of something that anyone can make at home. If you need it the internet has plenty of different recipes.

For the record, I can vouch for clay pots/donabe making excellent rice.  All kinds of things can be cooked in these beautiful pots and you can find them at Japanese markets like Mitsuwa or Marukai and you can also find gorgeous high-end ones at stores like this online.

Final cultural note, Tane miss-pronounces Yutaka’s name as “Yukata”. A yukata is a simple summer kimono. If you’ve watched even a couple of Japanese shows you’ve probably seen them get dressed in yukata’s to go see the fireworks during the summer festival.

Our Dining Table is currently available in the US on GagaOOLala.