Changes to Sakai requested by narrator

content/interviews/sakai-home_cooking.md

@@ -39,11 +39,11 @@ It took a long time. But in two and a half years, I guess, and then three years
 
 That's how I got into film, and it was horrible. They were very abusive people. Here I was as a production assistant, having to answer like eight calls at once. It was a really high-pressure job, but I eventually transitioned into an international sales company for films.
 
-Actually, I just saw my old boss again---his name is Lenny Shapiro. I hadn't seen him in at least twenty years, and he called me out of the blue. He's eighty-four years old, and he says, "Sonoko, let's have lunch!" I couldn't believe it. Lenny had a company called Shapiro Entertainment, and he helped people like James Cameron, who---he helped him with *Piranha*, which is one of Cameron's first films. Shapiro gave him a job. He couldn't even pay rent. He was doing the illustrations for Shapiro, and there I was, like a little secretary, answering phones.
+Actually, I just saw my old boss again---his name is Lenny Shapiro. I hadn't seen him in at least twenty years, and he called me out of the blue. He's eighty-four years old, and he says, "Sonoko, let's have lunch!" I couldn't believe it. Lenny had a company called Shapiro Entertainment. I was like a little secretary, answering phones.
 
 I started seeing this indie world of filmmaking. It was fascinating. Here's words and pictures, but very low, like B-level, underground movies. But some of them were really good, and some were art films, and even some were leaning more towards porno, and action-adventure, and low-budget films. I started going to Cannes and to the film markets.
 
-Here I was, a dropout of graduate school, but I was starting to find myself in the film world as a sales agent. I started meeting people from all over the world and selling movie rights. These were movies that were made under a million dollars. Every poster that James Cameron made, and he made a few, were like exaggerated action and sexy girls. I said, "That's not even in the movie!" and he would say, "It's okay, it looks good." I met people from all over the world, and became engaged in different cultures, and I also got to taste a lot of different foods. I would go to Cannes, I would go to Milan, and Venice, and London, and I was always trying the food.
+Here I was, a dropout of graduate school, but I was starting to find myself in the film world as a sales agent. I started meeting people from all over the world and selling movie rights. These were movies that were made under a million dollars. I met people from all over the world, and became engaged in different cultures, and I also got to taste a lot of different foods. I would go to Cannes, I would go to Milan, and Venice, and London, and I was always trying the food.
 
 Going to these film markets for me was all about eating. The first thing I would do is go to the farmer's market in the morning, just to check out the local scene. I was more interested in that than trying to make a deal with some film distributor. That became my path for almost twenty years. I started in the eighties, and I finished in 2010.
 
@@ -87,7 +87,7 @@ Then I got approached by the publisher Shambhala. They wanted to republish my ol
 
 I'm seventy now, so I'm not young anymore, but I get my Social Security, so all the years I put into film is giving me some security. Working from home keeps it economical. I don't have to pay rent. I still have some really interesting gigs. I'm getting ready to go to Chicago, then Tennessee to a farm.  Sewanee, the University of the South---I'm going to teach a class there. We're doing _hoshigaki_, which is the art of making dried persimmons, onigiri, and miso soup. They're trying to promote their Japanese program. They take students to Japan, and the professor's really interested in getting someone like me out there. Then I'm invited to a lot to Alabama, which is to make a full dinner. I'm expanding my horizons, and they come to me, which is really nice. I'm not trying to say, "Hey, I want a gig," it just happens.
 
-With the most recent book, it's more about fusion---fusing cultures. Japan has a very long history of borrowing.
+With the most recent book, published by Knopf, it's more about fusion---fusing cultures. Japan has a very long history of borrowing.
 
 *This is _Wafu Cooking_?*
 
@@ -99,7 +99,7 @@ I think we need to go back and see what we can learn from nature. Nature is the
 
 *What a journey. Could you go back a little bit to the beginning in some respects? You talked about your grandmother and the garden. How did you first learn your way around food? And, in that light, I wonder if you could say a bit about what home cooking means---as opposed to what people might experience of Japanese cuisine in a restaurant.*
 
-Americans experience Japanese cooking when they go to a sushi bar or something, right? It's a chef preparing something over the counter, and showing their nice skills, and making it look so perfect with beautiful presentation, but that's not practical for the home cook. Japanese home cooking is kore like Italian---simple, minimal ingredients. If we can eat it raw, we will.
+Americans experience Japanese cooking when they go to a sushi bar or something, right? It's a chef preparing something over the counter, and showing their nice skills, and making it look so perfect with beautiful presentation, but that's not practical for the home cook. Japanese home cooking is more like Italian---simple, minimal ingredients. If we can eat it raw, we will.
 
 I lived in Mexico for four years and then came back to Japan when I was in fourth grade. We lived with my grandmother, and she gave us the annex. There were five kids living in this two-bedroom little house. My brother got the closet. I had to share a bed with my sister.