One week. That's all the time Shuichi Kotani and his wife had to gather up their lives, pack what they needed, discard what they didn't and make the move from Tokyo to New York in 2008.
But then Kotani likes to do things fast. One of his first big trips away from his hometown of Himeji in Hyogo Prefecture was when he represented his junior high school in a national athletics meeting in Tokyo. Back then, he ran the 100 meters in just 10.9 seconds. That trip also gave the young Kotani one of his first glimpses of life beyond Himeji.
After high school, Kotani returned to Kanto — first to Yokohama and then Tokyo — working his way in and out of kitchens for nearly a decade and opening up his own catering company Worldwide-Soba, Inc. in the capital in 2005.
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