Jingisukan Daruma Main Shop

This guide to Jingisukan Daruma Main Shop in Sapporo's Susukino district opens with the smoky horseshoe grill counter that Kinetsuka Kikuko, a Zainichi Korean woman, opened in 1954 with her own hand-mixed mutton marinade, turning it within years into the neighborhood's most famous smell. It then follows the restaurant's later company president, a man with a senior post in Hokkaido's pro-Pyongyang residents' association, into a 2007 police investigation most diners at the counter today have never heard of. You'll hear how the case unfolded without ever closing Daruma's doors or changing its menu. Locals will tell you, almost apologetically, why some of them quietly stopped coming.