Chapter 5: Forward to the Past

When my father and I flew into Tokyo in September of 1988 it was raining as it always does when we arrive there. This was my second trip, and it dawned upon me that it just wouldn't be Tokyo if it wasn't grey and dreary and wet. Our luggage appeared on the gleaming stainless steel Narita Airport baggage carousel without a hitch, checked with typical Japanese precision by neatly uniformed checkers, and Customs was orderly and painless. We had made it.

The three hour bus ride from Narita to downtown Tokyo traversed the interwoven patchwork of small farms and tiny feudal wooden homes with square rice paper windows and dark ceramic tile roofs. I was struggling with a cold and a low grade fever which took root the day before our departure in New Jersey, and I was feeling quasi-miserable. After fourteen and a half hours in a fully booked 747, I was completely jetlagged and semi-conscious.

I groggily observed the transition from rice paddies and vegetable fields to tidily ordered suburbs to a massive dark urban sprawl peppered with scintillating neon billboards and crisscrossed by narrow rivers and even narrower elevated highways. The bus crawled along in the rush hour traffic, the white-gloved, navy blue uniformed driver listening intently to the bursts of Japanese traffic chatter on his two way radio. My father snored loudly as he dozed, not seeming to disturb any of the polite and dead-quiet fellow passengers. I was too tired to sleep, too congested to smell my father's foul breath.

We cabbed it from the bus terminal to Mr. Okamoto's apartment near the Daimon rail station and Shiba Park in the area known as Hamamatsucho, not far from the gaudy Ginza district of Tokyo. The taxi was spotless, without a dent or scratch, as are all the vehicles in Tokyo. Indeed, Tokyo is the most ordered, polite, immaculate, and crowded city I've been to in all the world.

In America, we equate a dense urban population with seething violence, high crime, poverty and racial tension. That is simply not the case in Japan. Tokyo is one of the busiest and most crowded cities in the world, and yet it is amongst the safest. This applies to all of Japan. There are many theories for why this is so: the homogeneity of the Japanese population, the societal conformity, the high degree of education and literacy.

Whatever the reasons, make no mistake about it. For all its detractions, the insanely high cost of living, the suffocating crowdedness, the maddening traffic snarls -- this is a society that seems to work. And this knowledge has caused me time and time again to question the very fabric of American society.

The cab driver wasn't very familiar with the exact location of the building (the building numbers on Tokyo streets are non-consecutive and, like any large, centuries-old city, the streets are a tangled maze), so he dropped us off at a nearby major intersection and we schlepped our heavy bags through the rain up to the apartment.

Mr. Okamoto, a distinguished looking millionaire executive in his mid 60s and close business associate friend of my father, was waiting for us there with one of his employees, Mr. Tanaka, a wiry, white-haired gentleman.

Having lodged at the Hilton in Tokyo's Shinjuku district the last time I was in Japan, this was my first stay in a private home. As I expected, the apartment was small, its furnishings compact and functional and, even though it was a one bedroom, it was not much larger than a studio apartment in New York. Also, it was difficult to suppress a pervasive stench of insecticide.

Okamoto-san insisted on taking us out to dinner, this despite my near comatose state, and I accepted conditioned upon a hot shower and shave. I felt sweaty and dirty and in desperate need of a change of clothes. Within an hour we were on a subway headed for the Ginza district.

The tiny restaurant was on an upper floor of a narrow nondescript office building. We stepped down a narrow stained wood hallway through a curtained partition and were immediately greeted by two kimonoed Japanese Hostesses who seemed to know Okamoto-san very well. They sat us around a rectangular wooden table Western style, that is, on chairs. Okamoto-san proceeded to order up dish after dish of subtle Japanese delicacies, most of which I had never eaten or even seen served in any other restaurant or home.

It mattered little that I couldn't fathom ninety percent of the Japanese discussion bantered about me, for I was much too preoccupied with the fascinating cuisine: fresh sashimi with sweet raw shrimp that literally melted in my mouth, thin broiled fish served on long, narrow dishes, piping hot lemon grass soup, dark buckwheat and thick white udon noodles with dried fish shavings, and a huge fish head in a clear broth whose milky eye Tanaka-san quickly scooped out and graciously served me.

The only thing I noticed that was conspicuously missing from this feast was steamed white rice. Could it be that native Japanese didn't eat rice with their meals? Or did it have more to do with its not clashing with the delicate fish tastes? I was much too tired to wrestle with this culinary issue; indeed, I was thoroughly exhausted and could not finish any plate that was set before me.

It was about 10:30 PM when we all parted our ways and my father and I headed back to the apartment. Okamoto-san would stay in a hotel to allow us privacy. I had been awake nearly 28 hours straight without any significant sleep and was now battling to keep conscious. Once my head hit the pillow I brought with me from home, I blacked out, my slumber intermittantly disrupted by the droning din of the livingroom television before my snoring father.

The next morning, my father and I accompanied Tanaka-san by rail to an amusement trade show where Okamoto-san's company was exhibiting their wares. We stayed a couple of hours here, most of my time spent waiting on line to test a new electromechanical arcade video game. The ride was an extremely realistic cockpit trainer-type simulation of an assault helicopter attack on a fleet of enemy ships and island bases.