Until you’re running late and stuck behind an abuelita looking for parking at Gilbert’s, you have not yet tested the true limits of your patience.  The parking lot on Red and Bird is one of the area’s worst, because something about Milam’s stores of Gilda cookies, Walgreens’s discounts on violet water, and the bottomless pastelitos at the aforementioned Gilbert’s brings abuelitas from anywhere within the ample scent-radius of a bottle of Chanel No. 5.

Go, anyway.  Go, and join the legions of Japanese who have turned Matsuri, the restaurant at the dead center of the strip mall, into a kind of site of pilgrimage. Just, if you show up on a random Wednesday and see a stretch limo or chartered bus drop about two dozen Japanese at Matsuri’s door, know that you’re in for a long wait. Word of Matsuri’s sushi and sashimi has spread. Just try to park behind the Mobil pumps.