After leaving Okinawa for the final time in 1968, I returned to Tokyo 11 years later in 1979. This time I was back in Tokyo with the US Embassy as a Foreign Service Officer. Jo and our two kids with our dog Smoke joined me a week later. We were housed in a three bedroom apartment in the Grew House of the Mitsui Compound in Roppongi. The Mitsui Compound is an 11 acre piece of land owned by the U.S. Government at the edge of Roppongi, bordering Akasaka. It consisted of three apartment buildings named Perry House (after Commodore Perry, who opened diplomatic relations with Japan), Harris House (Townsend Harris, the first U.S. Consul to Japan), and Grew House (Ambassador Grew who was the US Ambassador to Japan before World War Two). The compound was built shortly after the end of World War Two and by 1979 was literally bursting at the seams. Many of the embassy personnel lived in private rentals because there was not enough room at Mitsui Compound. So, the State Department decided to rebuild the compound with bigger and more modern versions of the Perry House, Harris House, and Grew House buildings, plus, surround the compound with townhouses for additional housing.
In the fall of 1979 everyone was moved out of the compound and placed in private rentals around the area, some as far away as Meguro. We were very fortunate in that we were moved to a three story flat in Roppongi. The Torizaka Place was a three story building with each floor containing large, well appointed, modern flats. We were on the second floor, a spacious four bedroom flat with two and half baths and a balcony! To give you an idea of high rent costs in Tokyo, even at that time the U.S. government was paying $3500 a month rent for that apartment! All three floors were occupied by U.S. Embassy families, so the embassy was paying out over $10,000 a month.
My third stay in Tokyo was just as good and memorable as it was on the two previous occasions. Tokyo had, of course, changed. But still, it was the same Tokyo that I remembered. We revisited some of my old hang outs, had pizza at Nicola's Pizza House and spaghetti at Sicilia's. It was very nice to be back in Tokyo, and I felt very comfortable. Jo too enjoyed Tokyo tremendously. She became the embassy's first Community Liaison Officer, and in that capacity, got to visit all sorts of places and meet all kinds of interesting folks. Our kids too enjoyed Tokyo very much. It is, as I said before, possibly the world's safest city, and the kids were able to go around on their own on subway without any fear. Our daughter Natalie, who was nine years old at the time, would get all dressed up and go with her friend, who was a year older, to have tea and cookies at a Roppongi tea shop every Saturday afternoon! Can you imagine two little girls that age going out on their own to have tea in New York, or any other city for that matter? They were perfectly safe in Tokyo and we never worried!
I was able to go hunting during the season and revisit some of the places that I had hunted as a kid. That was quite an experience, especially re-visiting the same places with the same hunters, my Japanese uncle and his friend Mano-san, who were now 25 years older! My uncle also took us to the most famous tempura restaurant in Tokyo located in Shinbashi. He took us there on the occasion when Jo's parents came out to visit us in Tokyo. The tempura was fabulous, served one piece at a time. I am not an expert on Japanese cuisine, so I really couldn't tell you just how good it was. But even to my rather uneducated palate, the tempura at that place seem to be a cut above the average. The bill, I discovered when I glanced over my uncle's shoulder as he paid, was something like $2000 for the eight of us, my uncle, his wife, Jo's mom and dad, our two kids, and Jo and me!
There were many such eye opening experiences for us. I was invited along with several other embassy officers to a famous geisha house by a yakuza boss. The invitation was actually extended to everyone in our section, but not everyone wanted to attend and be seen with gangsters. At the same time we were advised that to refuse would be an insult and could cause problems down the line. The yakuza boss, was also a powerful industrialist who owned several legitimate businesses, a common practice among yakuza. So, rather than turning down the invitation, a few were chosen, and luckily I was included, otherwise I would have never had the experience. Wives were not included! The famous geisha house, Nakagawa, is still very much in existence, and still very famous. Powerful business tycoons and Prime Ministers regularly patronize that place! Contrary to popular foreigners' perception that geisha houses are brothels, the Nakagawa strictly serves food and alcohol, and geisha's sing and dance and mostly converse, nothing more! It is strictly timed, since billing is based on time. Our time was two hours, during which we ate fabulous Japanese food served in small portions (no rice) and drank a lot of good sake! The geishas engaged us in conversation and entertained us with traditional dances. At the end of two hours we were ushered out, each one of us put in a haya (a black limousine) and whisked off home. No ride sharing, each guest had his own haya! When I got home, the uniformed, white gloved driver opened the door and bowing deeply and handed me a long cedar box wrapped in a beautiful silk furoshiki. He said that it was gift from the house Nakagawa. At home, Jo and I were very curious see what it was and opened the box and discovered that it contained three perfectly shaped honey dew melons! The melons, incidentally, cost about $40 each in Tokyo at that time!
There were may unexpected and delightful experiences during our stay in Tokyo. Roppongi and Akasaka were truly cosmopolitan with various international eateries. You could find almost any kind of ethnic restaurant! Moti's was an excellent Indian restaurant where the nan maker put on a show flipping the dough high in the air. There were many other excellent and inexpensive restaurants. There were many art galleries and they were treasure troves of Japanese woodblock prints! We bought so many artifacts and other things that when we were packing out of Tokyo, we discovered that we had doubled the size of our household goods shipment! Jo discovered some wonderful galleries and boutiques, many of these discoveries came about because of her position as the embassy's Community Liaison Officer. One women's clothing boutique that she found in Roppongi, Tomoyo, specialized in using fancy kimono material to make fashionable, Western clothing. She had several items made at this boutique. She had a casual jacket made that became her favorite that she wore all the time, and she had some beautiful cocktail dresses made out of silk kimono material.
All in all, our tour in Tokyo was a very rewarding and fascinating experience. The kids benefited tremendously from their Tokyo exposure, and it made their subsequent experiences in other countries much easier. For Jo and me, the tour in Tokyo was like a homecoming, it felt very familiar and comfortable. I was able to return to Tokyo briefly (spent a week in Japan) in 1993, and although it had changed again, it was still that old familiar Tokyo! Our daughter Natalie was there more recently, twice, once on a business trip about six or seven years ago, and more recently she took our grandchildren with her to attend one of her uncles' wedding. Everyone loved their time in Tokyo and want to go back, the grand children especially want to go back to eat ramen!
No comments:
Post a Comment