Elusive Sushi Search in Tokyo

Nighttime in Tokyo. I am walking in the Shibuya area. The bright lights bathe me as I people watch and peer into various storefronts. I allow myself to get lost. I follow small groups into alleys and side streets. I pass the love hotels and strip clubs. I observe the kitchen workers and delivery boys smoking at the back doors of their shops. I notice dance clubs with pictures of people I don’t recognize in hip-hop poses. But as a universal sign of their exclusivity, the front doors of these clubs are barred by velvet ropes and beefy black bouncers looking serious with crossed arms.

Occasionally I pop out onto a main street seeing the neon glow before I actually get there. It is on one of these main streets I see them walking in my direction. An American couple. College aged, maybe mid-twenties. Like the typical frat-boy he walks with arrogance and she has the blond demeanor of a cheerleader who has reluctantly given up the pom-poms. Holding hands they walk abreast down the sidewalk not seeming to notice anything around them.

“Hey buddy, you speak English?” he shouts at me.

Bewildered I respond that I do speak English. I don’t dress out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue but I do think I still look decidedly American.

“Know any good sushi restaurants around here?”

“No”

Astonished and frustrated he lets out, “You don’t?”

I am annoyed at his frustration. I laugh at his astonishment. “I’m just visiting, man.”

“So are we” the girlfriend chimes in.

Still holding hands with her, he walks both of them in a circle forming a little arc as he looks up to the Tokyo sky. No directions to a good sushi restaurant are forthcoming from the neon lights.

“Just walk around and go into one that is crowded with Japanese people,” I offer. I recall how unapealling a conveyor belt sushi restaurant full of non-Japanese people looked to me earlier in my trip.

He makes a sound that confirms he heard me but that he doesn’t think much of the advice.

I leave them in their desperate search for a good sushi restaurant in Tokyo. I spot another alley I have yet to explore. I duck down it leaving the bright lights behind me.