Monday morning I got up early in L.A. to attend class at the California Sushi Academy. The academy is in a new location, but for me it was a strange trip down memory lane. When I was researching The Zen of Fish in 2005, I attended class nearly every day at the academy for three months. This was my first visit back since then. And to be honest, I was a little anxious. The intense, samurai-like instructor Zoran used to make me nervous, and I hadn’t even been one of his students.

During my three-month stint in 2005, I spent my days at the academy taking notes as a journalist, for the book, so I could write about Kate Murray and her classmates. Now I’d come back to see Zoran in action again, and to meet a new class of students. And this time I had National Public Radio in tow; the show “Day to Day” was doing a story on The Zen of Fish and the academy.

Earlier,

I’d checked out the academy’s old location, in Hermosa Beach, back when it had been part of the Hama Hermosa restaurant. In The Zen of Fish I write about the dramatic failure of Hama Hermosa after the charismatic head chef, Toshi Sugiura, suffers a stroke behind the sushi bar.

The beach was still nice—like a scene from “Baywatch”—but the old building where I’d spent so much time was deserted and forlorn, with a “For Sale” sign draped across one corner.

At its new location, the academy is contained in a narrow space behind a modest storefront near Marina Del Ray, also in L.A.’s South Bay area.

I arrived, along with the producer and reporter from NPR, just as the current crop of students was preparing sushi rice and setting up their stations around the teaching table (pictured at left and above). Zoran arrived. The radio folks pulled out their microphones and Zoran began the class by reviewing techniques for cutting open octopus and squid. Just like old times.

Next Zoran did something he never would have done in 2005—he turned the class over to me. I stood at the head of the table, introduced myself to the class, and told them about my book.

Then the really interesting part began: I asked each of the students why they had decided to attend the sushi academy.

Unlike the class I covered in 2005, there were no women in this group. But they had unusual and varied backgrounds, and their reasons for wanting to become sushi chefs were fascinating. The guy pictured at right here is a master potter who likes working with his hands and loves the aesthetic aspects of sushi. The young man at left just finished high school; he’d grown up in a bad part of Koreatown and wanted to get away from the street life of drugs and crime but couldn’t afford college, so he’d settled on sushi school. Several of the other students told me they were interested in the psychology of being a sushi chef—learning to read customers, gauging their fears and level of adventurousness, and guiding them; one of these students was a former flight attendant.

Much of this made it into the “Day to Day” NPR radio story, which you can listen to here.

As we left the academy, Zoran told the students to pull out their fish and get to work.

I’d encourage anyone who lives or works near Marina Del Rey or Mar Vista to stop by the academy during one of their student lunch counters. Sit at the attractive seven-seat sushi bar, talk with these interesting students, and help them practice their skills behind the sushi bar.

(P.S. I don’t get anything from the academy for saying that. I have never had and still do not have any affiliation with the academy—although independently they have decided to advertise my book. If you want more information about the school, they have their own website.)