Revisiting Tokyo

Near J.R. Shinjuku Station is Memory Lane, an alley lined with closet-size yakitori restaurants. [Photo/Agencies]

He helped me unearth what felt like the real Tokyo of side streets and back ways, like Nonbei Yokocho (Drunkard's Alley), a quiet passageway lit up with red Japanese lanterns just across from the chaos of Shibuya Station. You could wander to the end, ascend a tiny set of stairs to Shutendo, a haven of Japanese whiskey and jazz that seats only seven people and vibrates when the J.R. Yamanote train runs overhead. I would have flown 14 hours just to have a shochu on ice there. Then go to the nearby Shibuya Creston Hotel, take the elevator one level down to the bland lobby and enter the cavernous Shabuzen, a smoky shabu shabu paradise of all-you-can-eat Japanese beef with waitresses in full kimono and ikebana arrangements.

Ever since I left Tokyo, I'd been providing friends, colleagues and anyone else passing through with directions to these establishments and others on a list of my favorite spots, most of which I had I picked up from Ken and my other Japanese friends. I wanted this itinerary to be the next best thing to having a Japanese friend, an entree into Tokyo beyond the incense-scented shrines, five-star hotel hospitality and raucous Roppongi district (which I avoided like the plague).

The list feels so vital because not only do very few Japanese speak English, but Tokyo also has a maze of unnamed streets and cultural barriers. This is a city where foreigners who want to get into a place unaccustomed to them can expect proprietors to cross their arms or fingers to flash an "X" or batsu symbol, which means "wrong" or "no good," or, as I like to think of it, "That ain't happening." (Robert and I may have broken some kind of gaijin record on our latest trip when an employee at a 24-hour McDonald's gave us the "X.")

Tokyo seems as if it were designed to keep the world at bay, its best self a secret neon-strewn walled garden that can provide both some of the most otherworldly and alienating experiences.

The list I created couldn't get you past the "X" gesture but it had become so widely circulated that as we were planning our first trip back in seven years, an acquaintance told me we must try the light-as-air steamed dumplings at Gyoza Lou, tucked down a nondescript back street around the corner from Kiddy Land in Harajuku. It was a useful tip, one that I recognized as my own.

After Robert and I arrived at the Park Hyatt Hotel from Narita Airport, we quickly refueled on a bento box at the 7-Eleven. (In Japan, even the packaged convenience store food is delicious.) Hoping to take advantage of our jet lag, we skipped a nap and met Ken and Ayumi in the hotel's glass-enclosed lobby, the setting of Bill Murray's and Scarlett Johansson's late-night longing in "Lost in Translation."