Anthony Bourdain

By this, I mean simply that many times in my life the statistical probabilities of a fatal outcome have been overwhelming – thanks to my sins of excess and poor judgment and my inability to say no to anything that sounded as if it might have been fun. By all rights I should have been, at various times: shot to death, stabbed to death, imprisoned for a significant period of time, or at very least

My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.

Sure, there were things to learn. I learn things all the time. But I’m talking about eye-opening, revelatory, perspective-altering life experiences: the exotic, the frightening, the totally new.

with a wife who still – remarkably – found me to be amusing on occasion

We went on, calling for more, our appetites beginning to attract notice from the other chefs and some of the customers who’d never it seemed, seen anyone – especially Westerners with our kind of appetites

Tsukiji, Tokyo’s central fish market, puts New York’s Fulton Street to shame. It’s bigger, better, and unlike its counterpart in Manhattan a destination worth visiting if only to gape

Things were different here in that the Japanese market workers had no compunction about looking you in the eye, even nudging you out of the way.

In Tokyo, it’s apparently okay, even de rigueur, to go out with the boss and the boys from the office and get completely, stuttering, out-of-control drunk.

I knew I could live here now. I’d learned a few things, not much, but enough to negotiate traffic, feed myself, get drunk, get around town

The idea of not returning the next day to repay the debt was, in typically Japanese thinking, unthinkable