Tuesday, November 1
Osaka
I like to think I’m an elite traveler. I get to the new city unafraid, on a mission, and walk with the velocity of somebody who knows where he’s going better than even the people who live there. In this way, I’m truly a soloist, moreover than even in dance than in any other aspect of my life including dance. Like the stoic spy from any Hollywood blockbuster who knows languages, topography, civil engineering and cultural nuances of every major city in the world.
Except that I’m not this person outside of my mind.
Especially not in Japan.
But this does not stop me. I am famished, you see. So once my ever-so hospitable hosts chaperones me to the Daiwa Roynet Hotel in a part of Osaka I haven’t bothered to learn the name of yet, I swoop out of it in my Zara black Matrix coat, make a left down the street and walk briskly until I see something that looks fetching. The place two blocks down on the corner is promising, so in I go.
When a place is so small that the seven people in it turn to look at you when you walk in, it’s hard not to commit to it. Think bar/restaurant where television investigators or police chiefs of assistant DA’s show up to vent or unwind, only a third the size. Sam Jackson’s curse words wouldn’t have even had room, let alone an actual Tarantino fight sequence.
So I sit at the bar, understanding that the host—a little more Waffle house vet than obsequious Japanese woman—doesn’t speak English really. She has some scant sense of the language, which is that she is fluent in comparison to my Japanese. She asks if I want a drink, and when I suggest no, she pushes the point, helping me understand it is mandatory with a menu.
“Sake” is a Japanese word I do know. I say this. She brings me a menu that has about 10 different kinds (there are that many?) of sake. I pick one with authority. After all, I am an elite traveler.
She then brings me a food menu with nothing but the three full alphabets with which Japanese is written. I gag. The Kenji is intimidating. I understand the prices and that’s about it. Not a picture anywhere. I surrender my elite traveler status and confess the obvious, that comprehension on my part is futile.
She points to a space of wall behind and above me with pictures of entrees. I pretend to know what is depicted on the pictures. She starts to explain, and the word “pasta” jumps out. Then I shamelessly point to it like a small child, feeling very much like an insipid, stupid American. She nods emphatically.
Twenty minutes later, as I sip sake that will certainly leave me unable to walk the 50 meters to the hotel after, she comes out with a beautiful black bowl of ramen and broth with fish. Yellowtail? Mackerel? It doesn’t matter. It is divine. Go figure I come to Japan and the first meal I have is the authentic version of the one I used to have as a kid because it was easy to make and great for lower income and/or single parent households.
The older gentleman at the table with two women walked by and said a few words in English I understood, welcome, thank you, medical. Before I could put the last one together, my more relaxed waiter now said some things in English connecting to the “medical” part of the conversation.
“Show. I watch…” she said, trying to find more words.
“Show, show, a medical show?”
“Grey Anatomy.”
“Grey’s Anatomy!!!!! Yes, I love it! It’s great isn’t it?”
“Yes! Yes! The doctor die in sixth season.”
“Dr. Sheppard. Patrick Dempsey!”
This was the connection I needed to feel okay. There in the too-small for TV/film restaurant/bar with no translator, this waiter was connecting to me in a big way about a vital ingredient for human sustenance, wait for it -
“I don’t speak English but I watch! I like, like the Chinese girl," the woman says.
“I love Christina Yang.”
“Yes! Yes! Yang!”
“But you know it’s human. Of course you understand anyway…”
And this was my introduction to elite traveling alone in Osaka. Maybe God was co-signing on my taking this teaching gig, where the primary communication between me as a sensei and the dancers in each class will be body language, by connecting me with a person through a television show using "anatomy" as a super-metaphor. My lesson: people all over the world love Grey’s Anatomy and if there is ever a language barrier, Shonda Rhimes is a good place to start. Maybe when I make it to Brazil on a dance performing or teaching assignment, I can say Annalise Keating when I run out of my limited cursory Portuguese…