Cruising Shibuya

For dinner I walked from Shibuya station, outward. Worst case would be that I meandered around until the closing of the subway, at which time I would follow the stream of revelers like a dutiful lemming. After a bit of wandering I found myself in an area with large, open patios – rather unusual for Tokyo, more like an American mall. Japanese restaurants surrounded me, yet I’d had enough of Japanese food. I needed a break.

An Italian restaurant beckoned from an upper level. I entered and was led to a table. The clientele was entirely Japanese. While this was not unusual for Tokyo in the off season, I had expected one or two gaijin.

Somehow the scent was off – not the Italian aromas I was anticipating. Two young women sat at a very adjacent table and chatted away, oblivious to my presence. They had pasta dishes of some kind. I settled in and looked over the menu, ordering ravioli when the waiter appeared.

It was a pretty night with city lights twinkling outside. I realized how often I had eaten in well-enclosed or subterranean restaurants, leading me to appreciate the unaccustomed view through these picture windows all the more. Then came the wine.

Red. A lot of it. All over my tablecloth! One of the chatting women had upended her glass with a hand gesture that sent it my way. After some initial surprise, I welcomed the anticipated interaction. I was the only foreigner in the restaurant, and no one had acknowledged my presence in the least. However coincidentally, it appeared I would finally meet someone, or at least exchange a few words with a neighbor.

Or not. The woman in question quickly dabbed at the spill with a napkin, righted her glass and continued talking with her friend. No formality of apology; no shy expression; not even a “Sumimasen,” excuse me. She didn’t skip a beat. For my part, I realized I hadn’t been completely ignored earlier. Now … I felt invisible.

Hello! Can anybody really hear me? Can anyone see me? I was lost in a veritable sea of people in Japan. Most were in some other dimension: I could see and hear them; but they, not me. Only those charged with dealing with strangers had been granted some special powers of transference, allowing them to communicate with me for a limited range of services: food, local transportation, business meetings. For all else I seemed adrift in some plasma, a lonely entity watching cells flow past, merging with none. For a curious, adventurous person such as myself, this isolation was as puzzling as it was disappointing.

My contemplation was interrupted by one of those special communicators, silently positioning a plate of ravioli in front of me. I thought of Italy, of Europe, of how much easier it was to travel amidst the languages and customs of the Western hemisphere. Yet I was in the Eastern, to me the land of the unaccustomed and unusual. At least I had a moment’s respite in familiar food. I dug in.

I’m sure there really was Italian food in Japan, just as we enjoy authentic cuisine from the Far East in America. This wasn’t it. I had no idea how a chef would go about making Italian food taste Japanese, but this one had succeeded — truly an amazing feat. I laughed at the thought of a group of hearty-eating Italians here, expecting bread, wine, pasta and sauces with meat and cheese. As I imagined their reactions of outrage, I almost choked on my food.

Once again I had to concede the logic, however. If a restaurant was to stay in business, especially during the non-tourist season, it had to cater to local tastes. And clearly, Japanese palates were different from those a half world away.

Unfettered by requirements of any social interaction, I drifted into reflection upon this Japanese-Italian puzzle. It wasn’t really so unusual. I myself liked to eat at Chinese restaurants in the States. Yet when I went with my Chinese friends, they ordered much differently. When I asked my Taiwanese associate at UMAX the origin of some congealed looking sauce, Andy had said, “You don’t want to know.” Indeed, I was content with Americanized Chinese restaurants; Szechuan beef, Mu Shu chicken and eggplant in garlic sauce were just fine by me. So why not Japanese-Italian for the locals in Tokyo?

I left the restaurant and wandered around the district, still quite confused as to my whereabouts. I wasn’t ready to concede “lost,” for I couldn’t be far from the station. It was truly amazing: I was in a culture so foreign that I was totally clueless as to content, direction – basics like letters, numbers, and signs. In a way this was like a Star Trek exploration of another planet, but without the universal translator that let you communicate to establish such things as theme and plot. I was just adrift.

Abandoning myself to the situation, I flowed with the tide – up and down streets that were more like alleyways. At last I saw a JR sign. If I could find the train station, the subway had to be nearby. I abandoned my drifting strategy and purposefully tracked down my exit portal. Inserting my metro card into the entry gate, I transported myself out of the realm of Shibuya.