Sayonara, Japan, For Now

Dinner at Ike's

I visit Japan in the summer because my son lives there. It's far, but at least it's not the moon.

When he first moved there, three years ago, he lived in a small town called Himeji. Again, not the moon, but I often wonder whether it's all that different. There was a Starbucks in Himeji, one that claimed to offer free wifi, but I quickly gave up on cracking the secret access code. In an entire week, we met one other American  family there -- missionaries, there to straighten out the nonbelievers, I suppose. I didn't mention I was Jewish.

A year later, my son moved to Kobe, a beautiful city not far from Himeji but far less like the moon. As alien as everything about Japan still seemed to me on my next visit, I was feeling a bit more  comfortable by then. I was almost starting to understand what drew him there. Almost.

It's been two years since my last visit, and I finally got a few things a bit more right. The hotel I picked, based upon a vague neighborhood recommendation from my son and cost -- much less than the uber luxury hotels with available rooms, much more than the "love" hotels with available rooms stocked with sex toys. Just a tad more well planned than throwing a dart at a map, really, but as it turns out, it's a lovely hotel in a beautiful part of the city. I nod several times daily in a kind of fish-out-of-water-solidarity when I pass other non-Asians. Most are European, but still, we take comfort in our shared foreign-ness.

The other night, my daughter and I joined my son and his friends/work colleagues for dinner. One of them was moving to Tokyo; it was a surprise goodbye party. The party was held in their Cheers, the equivalent of my favorite neighborhood watering hole in Midwestern suburbia, where it feels as if you are home, among family. The place is owned by a Canadian of German extraction and a Thai American. It occupies the top two floors of a small commercial building in a trendy area of Kobe. shirtlessness. I am mesmerized by the way he moves in the tiny hot space, an artist at work, his masterpieces simmering.

The first level is a bar, crowded with young regulars who don't seem to mind, or even notice, the close quarters or the noise. Outside is a metal stairway where folks can go for a smoke. Upstairs is a dining area with a large varnished wood table at one end and a smallish kitchen at the other. Between them is a narrow space with counters and high chairs on either side. The slanted windows on the outside wall offers a panoramic view of the street, ablaze with flashing neon. Ike, the Thai American, is in the kitchen, shirtless, a backward baseball cap on his head. He apologizes for his shirtlessness.

Ike takes care of this motley crew of twenty-something and thirty-something Americans, Europeans, and Australians, all teachers at an international school. There is only one native among them, but she is an exotic mix of Spanish and Japanese, so foreign also, in a way. They are energetic, bright, irreverent, diverse. One came to Japan to do some traveling; eleven years later, he is still here, with a wife and two children. One, a striking tall beauty from Milan, came four and a half years ago to find herself, and I wonder why she could not find it in Milan. One, a

young gay man with a sharp sense of humor and a flair for a good story came here from Brisbane because, well, why not? They all refer to Ike, the owner and chef, as "Mom." He is only thirty, but he has found whatever he was looking for, and I am content to rely on him as my stand-in.

I told Ike, that first night, about my quest for some storied Kobe beef. He insisted that we come for dinner the next night, and he would cook for me the best steak I had ever eaten. It wasn't really Kobe beef, but it was steak from Kobe. He warned me I would have to eat it rare, which was a little scary for a gal who prefers her steak to look like shoe leather, but at least he wasn't forcing me to eat fish that was eyeballing me from the plate.

The steak, oozing pink and practically mooing, was unbelievable. So was every other exotic mix of ingredients he prepared and served to us as if we were all his children, home for dinner. Home, in a  cramped duplex restaurant in a trendy neighborhood of Kobe, which is not as alien as, say, Himeji or the moon but pretty damn close.

I promised Ike (and threatened my son) I would be back, maybe in spring when the weather is a bit more humane. I might never feel completely at home, might never understand the lure, but I will continue to visit Japan as long as my son lives there, and as long as Ike is doing the cooking.