Looking at him today you would never know that Issaquah’s Sushiman, aka Bobby Suetsugu, was once a celebrated sumo wrestler in Japan. But beneath his average-sized frame lies the echo of a much larger man.
“I was 200 pounds at the age of 10,” he said, eyes wide and brows arched. His weight would eventually tip the scales at well over 350.
Born in Seattle to Japanese immigrants, Bobby was naturally drawn to Asian martial arts and started taking judo when he was five years old. At the age of 15, his instructor suggested he visit Japan for the summer to study sumo wrestling. That summer trip launched him on a 10-year career of training and competing in a sport where his size was an advantage.
Like many professional athletes, however, by the time he had reached his mid-20s Bobby was feeling the aches and pains of every match. He knew he needed to look into other career options, and he was ready to try something new. One of his advisors suggested he look into the culinary art of sushi preparation.
“Sushi is a lifestyle. People go into it at a young age,” he explains. “When I began at 25, I was much older than the others.”
Undaunted by the prospect of starting over, Bobby first trained with a master sushi chef for a year and then spent two years cutting fish at a family-owned restaurant. He liked that sushi provided the same sense of discipline he once got from sumo wrestling, and he appreciated the need to master the skills “by doing it over and over.”
After five years of sushi training in Japan, Bobby returned to the U.S. in 1989, where he continued to perfect his skills at sushi restaurants in New York.
In 1990, he came home to the Northwest and opened the Sushiman restaurant on Gilman Blvd. in Issaquah, eventually sharing his vast knowledge through the book “Samurai Sushi: A Field Guide to Identifying and Appreciating the World’s Most Unique Wraps, Rolls, and Sashimi”.
As much as life had evolved for Bobby, one thing had remained the same – his size. Fifteen years after retiring from sumo, he still weighed 370 pounds, and though he continued to exercise, he had developed diabetes.
Then he heard about Kangen Water, produced by filtering and ionizing basic tap water to make it less acidic. He started drinking a gallon of this water each day, and though he didn’t fully understand why, he began to feel better. Even more astonishingly, he began to lose weight.
“I lost 10-15 pounds a month over the next year,” he says. “I felt my body changing. It all comes down to detoxing. [The water] was draining all the toxins out of my body.”
While there is controversy as to whether or not Kangen, or other forms of ionized water, provide the benefits that proponents tout, Bobby firmly believes in its healing properties.
“It gave me back the touch of life,” he says, as he lightly taps the counter with his right finger.
And that touch of life is evident on Bobby’s face when he talks about his passions. Sushiman, like many restaurants in the area, has been hit hard by the down economy, but you’d never know it by the energy that Bobby exudes. He finds great enjoyment in serving and educating people, and no doubt, his customers are taken in by his broad, disarming smile.
