20 Feb 99

It’s Saturday and Y2K means Why To Care

I’m pondering whether to go to Kyoto today. The 7:00 AM sky looks promising. It’s mostly blue above, but with some clouds in the near distance. By the time I shower and get dressed, there’s these big sticky white things on the other side of my room’s window that suggest an alternate activity should be pursued. Like staying in.

So I dawdle – catching up on the last couple of days of the slim paper that keeps getting slid under the door. The Mainichi Daily News does not provide the more in-depth coverage of this Japan Times. However, it partly makes up for it in the "News in Brief" sidebars that occur on several pages. Yesterday for example:

What a guy. He feels sorry for the pranky pyromaniacs. Perhaps the adjusters will persuade the owner otherwise, like when they ask him to select between two rate structures – one that retains a certain two Gascoigne employees, and one that does not.

Thinking of flames and scorched stuff, of course I start thinking of cooking and where I will spend lunch. I open the yellow pages. And what’s this!? Here’s a boxed add for a vegetarian place called Seed of Life. (4-2-2 Kitakyuhoji-Machi, Chio-ku, (06) 251-1245.) It looks like it may be a place for true believers, but I figure I’ll give it a try.

In my book, most vegetarian places are for true believers and that means the primary ingredients are toe-phoo and sawdust. The "food" is not eaten because of its taste, but because it tests our commitment to some cause or other. In other words, if you can wolf (strike that, that’s carnivorous) nibble down that pizza made from a whole bran chapatti topped with seaweed, tofutti, and tamari sauce, then you’ve proved that you love whales and won’t hunt one down for dinner.

Seed of Life is one block west of the number 15 exit from the Hommachi Station on the Midosuji Line, then two and a half blocks south on the east side of the street. They’re open Monday through Saturday from 11:30 am to 3:00 pm. So this will be my only remaining chance to eat there this trip. It’s early so I decide to explore. I take the Tanimachi Line to the Tenmabashi station close to Osaka Castle. I was drawn to here because on the map it looked like there might be some narrow old streets here. No such luck. I meander south, then west and wind up at the locked up Seed of Life almost an hour early.

I walk back north a block and explore a small temple complex. Facing it is this incredibly tight motarless masonry wall of hewn granite rocks – many bigger than myself, and most heavier as well. The stonework looks to be several centuries old, whereas the buildings rising above it are certainly from the 20^th century. This is the back wall of another, more contemporary temple complex reached from the other side of the block. I think it’s called Minami Mido. I check out all the gold leaf while a monk’s chanting and incense smoke waft toward me from behind a carved screen. Judging from the office building that is part of this complex, religion is a bug business to some here too.

Now what – I still have plenty of time. I walk a short block or two west to Yotsubashi-Suji Avenue. There is a Senba Market – the closest thing I’ve seen yet to a supermarket. Next door is a little bakery, and next to that a liquor store. I go to the market – it’s comparable in size to a Trader Joe’s. I browse the aisles and come up with stuff like CreaP (powered coffee creamer), President Coffee (Have a sip of the President), First Lady Beer (Have a sip of the First Lady), and Pipi straws (Have a sip with your Pipi). I buy a bunch of this stuff to take home to the nonbelievers.

Rather than haul bags around, and due to a call of nature, I decide to return to the hotel. The entrance to the Yotsubashi Line’s Hommachi station is just across the street, and two stops takes me to the end of the line, which adjoins the Hilton’s basement. I take it upstairs, only to find that my room is being made. From all the stories, I’ve come to believe that privacy is not to be had. The cleaning will take place no matter what I do. So I drop my bags and go out to explore the hotel. I finally visit the restaurant floors, the guest facility floors, and the banquet floors where elderly ladies in Kimonos partake of tea while their husbands ride the elevators with shopping bags stuffed with costumes and clothing changes.

I nonchalantly sprint back to my room – this time to find that the bed-maker has been replaced by the room-cleaner. She is moving things about on the bathroom counter, searching for the Zen arrangement of toiletries, medication, and toothbrush glasses – stopping to reflect on each arrangement. I manage to contain myself (so to speak), put my coat in the closet and sidle out the door.

I explore the two basements and seven upper floors of the Hilton shopping arcade. I find little of interest here. Armani & Co. didn’t design anything with people like me in mind. Y’ know that specter in the painting "The Scream"? Add hair and high heels, connect them with a coat hanger and you have what these guys’ model of the ideal woman should be. Then they put them on a runway, tell them to walk like they’re squishing along a slippery sidewalk paved with dog poop, and to wear an expression like their smelling it too. Not that Rubens was right either, mind you!

Ten minutes have gone by, and I’ve run out of hotel. But wait, I haven’t yet been up to the Windows of the World Sky Lounge!

With ears popping, I’m catapulted up to the 35^th floor. They’re serving buffet brunch at some $40 a pop. But remember, I still want Seed of Life lunch. So I ask to sit at the bar. I’m the bartender’s only ward on this raised platform in the middle of the long and narrow dining room floor. Tables line the windows and the two aisles alongside. I have a panoramic view out both sides. I also have a bowl of sparkling candied walnuts with sesame seeds on one side. And an Asahi draft on the other. It’s a struggle, but I manage to look up at the view now and then. I pay up and descend.

They’ve finished my room. Finally, an hour after arriving at the hotel, I take advantage of Hilton’s hospitality.

Soon, I’m ready for more. Back down and down into the train tubes, clattering and screeching, while dueling PA systems retrieved from airport duty competitively blast holes in your consciousness. Back up and out and along, and shortly I’m entering the womb of the Seed of Life. Service is all-you-can-(stand to)-eat buffet. Of course, I’m exaggerating my negativity to try to make a funny at their expense. My apologies. Actually, the salad bar has very fresh items, as well as some Japanese pickled specialties. On the hot side, there is spaghetti with either the ubiquitous brown curry sauce, or a pretty good tomato sauce with either wheat gluten or some soy stuff that does a reasonable simulation of ground meat. There is also vegetables and miso soups, soba, a casserole something, steamed green beans, and a few other comforting things I can’t remember. I have a beer to wash it all down.

The place is simple, homey. The front room has the tiny kitchen on one side of the entry. The servery counter on the other. Dining is in the back room, with posters, announcements, and advocacy literature taking up the passageway between. From what I’ve heard, the Hard Rock has more Caucasians than any place in town. The Seed of Life probably comes in second. While I was there, two other tables had Americans at them. Between them and myself we made up 40% of the attending clientele. Considering the number of Americans in Osaka at the moment is probably somewhere around a few thousand, then vegetarianism is more popular in the beefy ol’ USofA than in red-meat-as-flavoring Japan.

The meal was good enough and cheap enough that I will probably come back yet another time. Meanwhile, back to the hotel.

I look for other places to go. I see some twisty streets in the Miyakojima area. So I hop the JR Tozai Line train to the Osokajo-Kitazume station and start walking east. It’s looking promising. I’m walking towards the Kyobashi Station and there’s a houseware store under the north side of the tracks. I go inside. I try to ask for a card. No comprend-u. I reach to get my wallet to show them what a "card" is. My hand comes up empty. Apparently so was my brain when I walked out of the hotel room. My wallet, ID, money, telephone numbers, etc. were having a happy rest back on my writing table. Fortunately, I had enough change to catch the train back.

Back to the hotel.

I return to the Kyobashi station via the JR Loop Line, which leaves from across the hotel. Dusk is falling. So are my arches. But I explore on. There are several covered streets that radiate out from the station. The first block or so in all directions is like Vegas on steroids – it’s solid Pachinko parlors. The harmonic warbling bells and clatter of steel balls bouncing into stainless bins is an ear-splitting din of happy sounds perfectly paired with the whirling, blinking, bright colored lights that strobe their way into the cerebral cortex jack-hammering away on the pleasure button. It is the yin to the womb’s yang. If conception takes place in quiet darkness, then this must be the environment at the moment of death. This is the human equivalent of transfixing deer with the onrushing roar and headlights of a truck. Some of the robotized slack-jaws transfixed in front of these machines prove my point.

The covered streets are a bit disappointing as well. They fizzle out in a block or two, and most of the shops have closed for the night. Only the little restaurants are open. Teenage hookers line the streets nearest the station and at the station itself. They are serially spaced out like sparrows on a power line. They cast furtive glances at each other, making sure their turf is not trespassed, as they try to act like they’re waiting for someone. I feel uncomfortable and leave. What outwardly appeared attractive belied the soullessness within. Every smile a fraud, every laugh an insult. Sadness rode hanging on the strap next to me to Osaka station.

I had ventured enough for the day. I go to an Italian café I had spotted at noon on the 2^nd basement of the shopping complex next to the Hilton. The plastic food out front is in both Japanese and Italian. The menu headings are in English (Salad, Pizza, Pasta, etc.), but the individual menu selections are written in Kanji. I think the pronunciation of the Kanji approximates the Italian.

I have an Insalta Vedura, Quattro Fromaggio Pizza and some wine. The salad greens are fine, with an indecipherable tomato (?) based dressing that is a little strange, but flavorful. The pizza is on one of these thin, flavorless, lavish style cracker crusts. The top is unadorned but for the cheese. The unusual use of Gorgonzola overpowers the flavors of the other three cheeses. It’s okay, but not as good as other Italians I’ve been to.

It’s been a full day, but an empty day. A day of several false starts - and false endings as well. Lots of activity, but little accomplished. It seems like a continuation of the past five days rather than a reprieve from them.

Ah well, tomorrow is Kyoto.

Maybe.

Udon Saga