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You can sip sake while nibbling sushi or sharing small-dish appetizers at the new Ginza Sushi and Izakaya Style Dining — Tucson's first full-fledged izakaya-style restaurant.

You can also get flan and a Sonoran sushi roll spiked with jalapeño peppers.

The menu is a marriage of the Japanese and the Mexican cultures of owners Jun and Diana Arai, who opened the restaurant a couple of weeks ago near North Kolb Road and East Sunrise Drive.

He's from Japan. She's from Mexico.

Today they'll celebrate the sixth birthday of their youngest son, Hiroshi. Their oldest son, Jo, is 9. Both boys were born in Tucson.

Theirs is a relationship of East meets West.

With a little prompting, they shared their story.

It begins: They were both 20 when they met through mutual friends. Diana was taking business courses at a college in her native Hermosillo. Jun was in Mexico studying Spanish.

He ended up in Mexico at the urging of two Mexican co-workers in Japan. He persuaded his parents, who own a clothing store in Japan, to let him go so he could study Spanish.

"It's a party in Mexico, six days a week," Jun says now, with a laugh. "I had fun so I went three years in a row, just summertime, April to October." He returned to Japan to teach skiing each winter.

The first date: Diana was longtime friends with one of Jun's co-workers, who urged her to meet Jun and go on a double-date. Although she went, Diana resisted a formal date for nearly two years because "I thought he was a teenager. He used to look like a 12-year-old, a 14-year-old, when he was 20," said Diana, who is proficient in Japanese, Spanish and English. Jun said when he first laid eyes on Diana, "She was very pretty. I liked her the first time."

Diana agreed to a bona fide date on Jun's 22nd birthday. Sometime that night, they shared their first kiss.

I knew it was love when: "He had to go to Japan for three months and I didn't like it," she said. "We had been dating three months. Then it was like that: Winters he would be gone, summers he was there. We didn't want to do the long-distance thing."

Jun had a similar epiphany. "When I was in Japan all winter, I missed her a lot," he said.

The proposal: In 1996, as he was about to leave Mexico for good, Jun popped the question. "I was going to go back to Japan, and I want to take her to Japan," said Jun, whose mastery of English is a work in progress. His Spanish, however, is pretty good. "So I asked her, 'Can you marry me?' I couldn't separate."

Meeting the family: Jun took Diana home to Japan to meet his parents and his older sister and brother. He also took her skiing.

"Two days after I got there, we went skiing and he was saying that I was a very good skier," Diana said. "The next round I broke my leg. His family was mortified that I came all this way and they were sending me back with a broken leg."

The wedding: They exchanged vows the next year in Hermosillo. Jun's parents and siblings came from Japan. The rest of the guests were from Mexico. Diana said it was a traditional Mexican wedding that included the equivalent of a rehearsal dinner the night before at a restaurant with mariachi. The ceremony, though, was sensitive to Japanese culture. "In Japan, you're not supposed to be kissing in public," Diana explained. "But we did because we were in Mexico. But it was very short so not to offend anybody."

"It was a very nice church," Jun recalled. "It was very nice."

Off to Japan: Jun and Diana moved to Jun's hometown after the wedding. He went to work in restaurants, learning the fine art of Japanese cooking. She set about learning Japanese and soaking in the culture.

North America calling: After two years in Japan, the couple moved to Tucson in 1999 so that Jun could help a family friend open the Sushi Ten restaurant at 4500 E. Speedway. Tucson was a nice middle ground: near Diana's family in Hermosillo and in a city where Jun already had friends.

"It was easy for both of us; he has his Japanese community here, and I have my Mexican community," said Diana, who, like Jun, is now 34. "It's a good compromise."

Their newest venture, the restaurant, is also a good compromise. He runs the kitchen, she runs the business.