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Some people say they miss the boats, but Phu Yoshino, owner of Yoshino Japanese Restaurant in Fresno, said it’s time the boats changed course.

So Yoshino is giving long-time customers a piece of Yoshino history — the two-foot long boats that for 38 years brought countless sushi rolls to customers.

When the Fresno County Health Department said that the sushi and teppanyaki restaurant could no longer float people’s food to them on the tiny wooden vessels, it happened to coincide with Yoshino’s decision to bring a new face to the restaurant she is still getting used to calling her own, 12 years after Ichiro Yoshino — her husband and the restaurant’s founder — died.

“I don’t think of myself as a business owner,” Yoshino said. “It always feels like it’s my husband. I’m always the woman behind the man, so to speak.”

The lease came up this month for Yoshino Japanese Restaurant at 6226 N. Blackstone Ave., just over a month after Herb Bauer Sporting Goods closed up shop in the same shopping center.

Yoshino faced a tough decision — one successful business owners must face at some point.

She wondered if the current location was the best place to continue the tradition of her husband’s name. Her River Park location doesn’t have teppanyaki tables, and she thought hard about moving to a newer area of town. Competition from other teppanyaki and sushi restaurants was something new to her.

“The competition is fierce. When my husband passed away, there wasn’t that much competition,” Yoshino said. “It’s been somewhat of a difficult time for me.”

She spoke with some of her loyal customers who told her they would go wherever she went, and she decided to stay.

“It feels like now, to start it here, I’d like to end it here as well,” Yoshino said. “There’s a nostalgia about this place.”

Making the decision to stay took what she describes as strength and courage.

“She’s done all of it since her husband passed away,” said Jim Burden, one of the partners who manage the shopping center.

Signing on for another lease meant she would be in it for the long haul and there were things she needed from her landlord to incentivize staying.

“I didn’t think I had the courage to ask for an amount,” Yoshino said. “I felt like I was asking for the world.”

She negotiated new paint on the exterior, new lighting, as well as her name on the marquee.

Now, the new look outside the building comes concurrently with the work being done on the inside to bring a new look to Yoshino Japanese Restaurant.

Work began back in March to “see an old brand in a new light,” in Yoshino’s words.

She’s replacing all of the carpet with wooden tiles, adding black granites and redoing both the sushi and alcohol bars. Work is expected to go through August

“He worked so hard to build this restaurant. I’ve always followed that formula that he did,” Yoshino said. “I realized now more than ever I have to change that formula a bit.”

This wasn’t the first time that Yoshino had to make the decision to stay.

Shortly after her husband died in 2006, her lease was also up. While she had run the smaller location at River Park, it was always her husband who ran the main restaurant. She was mostly there to take care of their children, Yoshino said. Restaurant management was not something she saw herself doing.

It was only a week after her husband’s funeral that she had to make a decision. A buyer emerged around that time, offering to take up the Yoshino name.

Her degree from Fresno State was in nursing. Running a business was foreign to her.

“I could have sold it and I did have a buyer,” Yoshino said, “but for some reason, I was thinking about all my poor employees. If I were to sell it, what about them?”

She decided to stay and take up operations and management and now oversees the roughly 120 employees in two locations.

What began in 1980 with 2,252 square feet has expanded to 9,752 square feet, including a sushi bar, teppanyaki tables and a private dining area for parties.

“Before, it was the vision of my husband,” Yoshino said. “But now, it’s a little of Phu’s vision moving forward.”