She ducked beneath a clouded sheet of plastic. The noodle stall was crowded: squat blue tanks of butane, the three cooking grids with their tall pots, plastic sacks of noodles, stacks of foam bowls, and the shifting bulk of the big Korean as he tended his pots. "Sit," he said; she sat on a yellow plastic canister of MSG, her head below the level of the counter. "You're Japanese?"