His arms and legs are frail. The disproportionate width of his shoulders to the rest of his body could have reflected time spent in the swimming pool, but he has been opening and closing the steel lid of the gyoza pan every day for the past forty years; their muscles sing. Every time he closes the lid he slumps, and contemplates. Was he a divorcee; an absent father; a maker of the perfect gyoza? His hands are like pink vegetables that have seeped for hours too long. They hang limp from their wrists - and as much as the shoulders testified to their singular task, their repertoire extended no further than the turning of knobs or the lifting of lids. “Ten gyoza for the customer at the counter, please.”