Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad

WHEN CHOPSTICKS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM

224 Tokyo,฀1995 “I’m so sorry,” I tell Michi, “but my stomach is sending a message that I dare not ignore. I’ve been looking forward to our reunion, and especially the sea bass you promised to steam for me. ‘I’m in my element with fish,’ you said, sounding mystical . I almost asked you about the connection between fish and feminism. But I decided to save that conversation for dinner. And now I have to cancel. Even if I could get to your house this evening, there’s no way I could do justice to the sea bass.” I hang up the phone, relieved. It’s my last day in Japan. For three weeks in six cities, I’ve lectured and toured and been extravagantly feted. Every breakfast, lunch, and dinner has been a social event. I’ve knocked myself out being an attentive and lively guest. My appetite is sated. Even though an invitation to a Japanese home is uncommon and Michi is a charming, high-spirited woman, I just can’t manage another evening out. Still, I regret having to hide behind my stomach. I regret not being able to admit to Michi, as I would to an American friend, that heavy rain turns the outside world into enemy turf. If the rain weren’t challenging enough, there’s the complicated subway ride to Michi’s place, halfway across Tokyo, which involves three changes of trains. (A taxi would be a stiff $50 each way.) TheTokyo subway system, with only a limited number of transliterated signs, is hard on a foreigner at the top of her form. On this final day in Japan, I’m functioning in a very low gear. I yearn for my own kitchen and bed. After making my excuses to Michi, I meet with senior English majors at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University, where I’ve been a visiting scholar for the past several days. Standing before forty impeccably groomed young women, I describe the conflicts my female students confront when they set out to “have it all”—career and family, independence and intimacy, private time and leisure. I mention one student’s unwanted pregnancy, another student’s boyfriend who sabotaged her plan to become a police officer, and a lesbian student’s suffering and triumph in the military. I mention students dealing with day care and elder care and the likelihood of commuting marriages. When I ask how it is for young women in Japan, a long silence ensues. After prompting from their professors, three students WHEN฀CHOPSTICKS฀ARE฀฀ NOT฀THE฀PROBLEM฀ WHEN CHOPSTICKS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM 225 acknowledge anxieties about the tight job market. But no one speaks about social constraints, self-doubts, or escaping for six months to the Australian outback. Will I never learn? I’m a stranger, an American professor passing through. The students and I have one hour together. I come on with bravura, recounting confessions from a U.S. feminist classroom. My self-consciously American performance is up close and personal, like an unexpected invasion. I should have been prepared for Japanese reticence about private matters and shyness in speaking English. Back in my suite, I finger two elegantly printed Japanese notebooks, filled with jottings on memorable Japanese meals, considerate Japanese colleagues, protocols for sampling food in department stores, and the Japanese art of gift wrapping. I reread my comments about Japanese stay-at-home wives as activistvolunteers and Japanese nursery school kids who do not fight over toys and food. What do these impressions add up to? What have I truly understood? With my academic responsibilities completed, I am free now to languish in my own head in these blessedly quiet quarters. Ever thoughtful, my Japanese hosts at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University have filled the kitchen larder with oranges, white bread for toast, jam, rice, miso soup, coffee, and chocolate. To these provisions I’ve added a comforting bottle of Johnny Walker Red. Making do for dinner will be no problem. Outside, the downpour is subsiding. Streaks of light dart across the dark gray sky. Perhaps I don’t have to stay in after all. It’s foolish to spend this last evening at a kitchen table, washing down a meal of white toast and white rice with a couple of stiff scotches. I can grab an umbrella and a magazine and head for the Peipin Bar and Restaurant across the street. Maybe the chef will remember that...