I returned to Japan last month after a gap of nearly 6 years. A place that I used to call a second home back in the day when I spent more time there than anywhere else. When I could get around the Tokyo area by subway without having to refer to a map or stare at the map on a station wall like it was the Mona Lisa. When I could walk into a traditional Japanese restaurant and order food without my colleagues having to poke at it to confirm its vegetarian credentials. When I could talk, swear and even flirt delicately in primitive Japanese. Although I was visiting a part of Japan that I have never been to, the trip was definitely nostalgic and brought back many memories, including about this incident. So this trip was, in many ways, like meeting an ex girl friend with whom you've had a smooth break up. If that has ever happened in the history of mankind that is.
While the passage of time has deeply eroded my Japan survival skills, the brain cells started firing and I felt like I could roll back the years and get back into the zone.
The travel plans for one of the days left me with some time to kill in Tokyo around lunch time. I promptly decided to visit Raj Mahal restaurant in Shinjuku, a very busy district of Tokyo city and partake of their lunch buffet, an almost religious ritual that I undertook when I was posted in rural outposts. This restaurant was my hang out spot during the weekends. If I wasn't holed up in my small room, I was here. Or on a train headed here. I used to travel two hours one way on Sundays to make it to their doorstep. And in exchange for a 1000 Yen, I would then proceed to stuff myself with ginormous servings of all vegetarian dishes and go back to survive another week on jam sandwiches and cold milk. Good times.
I got off the train at Shinjuku station - cited by Wikipedia as the world's busiest train station. I knew, from memory, how to get to Raj Mahal from there. Even though the station exits had undergone serious renovation, I could readily trace my steps from many years before through the milling thousands to Peace building (Peesu Biru in Japanese), the fifth floor of which housed Raj Mahal and deliverance from hunger.
The building was nondescript and easy to miss and still retains that aspect today. But not to the eyes of this veteran of many feasts there. I stepped into the elevator, pressed for the fifth floor and ensured that I had enough finances to get me nourished. As I was planning on how to work my way through the buffet, the doors opened and instead of the usual smells and sights of an Indian restaurant around lunch hour, I was assaulted by a fishy smell. Smell of living fishes than cooked ones. It was as if the elevator went from Shinjuku to Ayodhya Kuppam. I stepped out and was in for a shock. Where once stood a tandoor (manned by sweaty cooks) was a stack of empty fish tanks. The buffet line had been replaced with a bench that had aquarium paraphernalia scattered all over. The cash register was gone and in its place was an office desk with no one behind it. I quickly stopped the elevator doors from closing and looked through the building directory inside. It confirmed that the place was indeed an aquarium supply business. I inquired about the vanished Raj Mahal with the convenience store clerk downstairs. The clerk, though sympathetic to my wails and howls, was not of much help and quietly led me out of the store.
Fighting hunger in foreign lands somehow brings out the best in me. Imagine VVS against the Aussies. I immediately scorned the idea of taking refuge in a Saizeriya or some random pizza place and taking the train back to work. When fate throws me a tough one (and it seems to have made a habit), I rise up and shine and hunt down the nearest Indian restaurant and have a square meal. Go here for a similar incident.
I knew Raj Mahal was a chain and that it had a restaurant in nearby Shibuya. The only problem was that I had never been to that particular outlet. Oh and Shibuya is Shinjuku's twin sister on steroids, with its own maze of streets and hurrying crowds and is the world's fourth busiest train station. I still took a train into Shibuya armed with little besides confidence.
Bigger train stations around Tokyo have up to 6 main exits and your destination decides which one you take. Since I had no information except the name, Icarefully randomly chose the West exit and approached the lady at the information booth. After many iterative attempts, she finally understood that I was looking for Raj Mahal Shibuya, an Indian restaurant. But once she got it, she was very quick in telling me that not only did she not know the place but that she couldn't access anything besides the train reservation system on her computer. hai domo!
Undeterred, I exited the station and scouted around a bit, hoping that Raj Mahal would give itself up and cross my field of vision. The chance for success from that approach is roughly the same as randomly breaking into the "family song" in crowded Bombay and reuniting with the long lost sibling in the last stanza. (The lost sibling always chimes in during the last stanza.) Happens only in the movies. Anyways, I quickly gave up this exercise and chose one that allowed a better shot at success.
We live in the age of Web 2.0. Although I don't have the foggiest clue of what Web 2.0 means (or for that matter, what Web 1.0 meant when it was smart to work that into a random sentence), it seems to be the smartest thing to say these days. Also, cloud computing. What does it really mean? That the clouds will do math from now? But back to the story. We live in the age of Web 2.0 (and cloud computing) and the best thing to do when lost is to whip out your cellphone and consult Dr. Inter Webs. Easy peasy. Except that my international data roaming rates skewed the math in favor of having a Big Mac without the beef patty.
Plan B was to tap into the resources of the telecom giants. I casually strolled into a phone showroom nearby, a nice, well lit place, looking every bit like a potential customer. Since it was the lunch hour, customers were few and in a couple of minutes I found myself face to face with a slim, smart and smiling sales assistant that was peddling slim, smart but non-smiling phones. I brought her up to speed on my situation and requested her to look up the place and give me the location. Well manicured fingers caressed an ipad screen and in less than 30 seconds, she gave me the phone number and location of the place written out on a piece of paper. I'm now officially in love withthat girl Japan. And also very hungry.
I must now let my readers in on a secret about Japan: they don't care much for naming their streets. That's right, no street names.Addresses in Japan are merely cryptic alpha numeric clues based on a complex, 3 dimensional, coordinate system, intended to take you in the general direction of your destination. In confusing circles. They overcame this problem by building great cars to drive around asking for directions. They have a numbering system that was invented when Tokyo was a collection of a few straw huts and everyone knew each other by first name and have never bothered to update it. E-mail may have been developed only so that the Japanese could finally stop delivering letters.
On the one hand we have very detailed addresses like we do in Chennai that has a lot of information but actually conveys very little:
Door No 12/4-D (Old No. 148/73-M), II Floor, Plot No: 26
14th Lane, 6th Cross Street, VII Sector,
KK Nagar, Chennai 78.
and on the other, we have addresses in Japanese that are more like a cryptic message.
So knowing pretty well that the address she had handed me in a piece of paper was of very little value, I pestered her for directions. But beyond (literally) pointing me in the direction and saying something about a Starbucks and a DVD store, she couldn't do much as some real customers that were actually willing to do some business had arrived. Stepping out and heading in the direction she had pointed me to, I spotted the Starbuck's logo a couple of blocks away and walked over there. After a bit of walking down small alleys, I did run into a store selling music CDs. And with that, I had run out of further directions.
Still refusing to settle for a burger, I looked around for another phone show room. Thankfully, I located one not too far, walked in and repeated the routine. The sales attendant confirmed that I had been doing well and gave me almost turn by turn directions. She also printed out the map and drew lines for me to follow and highlighted a police booth to check in should I get lost. I'm now officially in love withthis girl Japan all over again.
I finally arrived at RajMahal, Shibuya. I was informed that the Shinjuku branch had closed a few years earlier. They had also done away with lunch buffet altogether. I had to settle for a set lunch with nan, curry, rice and a lassi.
While the passage of time has deeply eroded my Japan survival skills, the brain cells started firing and I felt like I could roll back the years and get back into the zone.
The travel plans for one of the days left me with some time to kill in Tokyo around lunch time. I promptly decided to visit Raj Mahal restaurant in Shinjuku, a very busy district of Tokyo city and partake of their lunch buffet, an almost religious ritual that I undertook when I was posted in rural outposts. This restaurant was my hang out spot during the weekends. If I wasn't holed up in my small room, I was here. Or on a train headed here. I used to travel two hours one way on Sundays to make it to their doorstep. And in exchange for a 1000 Yen, I would then proceed to stuff myself with ginormous servings of all vegetarian dishes and go back to survive another week on jam sandwiches and cold milk. Good times.
I got off the train at Shinjuku station - cited by Wikipedia as the world's busiest train station. I knew, from memory, how to get to Raj Mahal from there. Even though the station exits had undergone serious renovation, I could readily trace my steps from many years before through the milling thousands to Peace building (Peesu Biru in Japanese), the fifth floor of which housed Raj Mahal and deliverance from hunger.
The building was nondescript and easy to miss and still retains that aspect today. But not to the eyes of this veteran of many feasts there. I stepped into the elevator, pressed for the fifth floor and ensured that I had enough finances to get me nourished. As I was planning on how to work my way through the buffet, the doors opened and instead of the usual smells and sights of an Indian restaurant around lunch hour, I was assaulted by a fishy smell. Smell of living fishes than cooked ones. It was as if the elevator went from Shinjuku to Ayodhya Kuppam. I stepped out and was in for a shock. Where once stood a tandoor (manned by sweaty cooks) was a stack of empty fish tanks. The buffet line had been replaced with a bench that had aquarium paraphernalia scattered all over. The cash register was gone and in its place was an office desk with no one behind it. I quickly stopped the elevator doors from closing and looked through the building directory inside. It confirmed that the place was indeed an aquarium supply business. I inquired about the vanished Raj Mahal with the convenience store clerk downstairs. The clerk, though sympathetic to my wails and howls, was not of much help and quietly led me out of the store.
Fighting hunger in foreign lands somehow brings out the best in me. Imagine VVS against the Aussies. I immediately scorned the idea of taking refuge in a Saizeriya or some random pizza place and taking the train back to work. When fate throws me a tough one (and it seems to have made a habit), I rise up and shine and hunt down the nearest Indian restaurant and have a square meal. Go here for a similar incident.
I knew Raj Mahal was a chain and that it had a restaurant in nearby Shibuya. The only problem was that I had never been to that particular outlet. Oh and Shibuya is Shinjuku's twin sister on steroids, with its own maze of streets and hurrying crowds and is the world's fourth busiest train station. I still took a train into Shibuya armed with little besides confidence.
Bigger train stations around Tokyo have up to 6 main exits and your destination decides which one you take. Since I had no information except the name, I
Undeterred, I exited the station and scouted around a bit, hoping that Raj Mahal would give itself up and cross my field of vision. The chance for success from that approach is roughly the same as randomly breaking into the "family song" in crowded Bombay and reuniting with the long lost sibling in the last stanza. (The lost sibling always chimes in during the last stanza.) Happens only in the movies. Anyways, I quickly gave up this exercise and chose one that allowed a better shot at success.
We live in the age of Web 2.0. Although I don't have the foggiest clue of what Web 2.0 means (or for that matter, what Web 1.0 meant when it was smart to work that into a random sentence), it seems to be the smartest thing to say these days. Also, cloud computing. What does it really mean? That the clouds will do math from now? But back to the story. We live in the age of Web 2.0 (and cloud computing) and the best thing to do when lost is to whip out your cellphone and consult Dr. Inter Webs. Easy peasy. Except that my international data roaming rates skewed the math in favor of having a Big Mac without the beef patty.
Plan B was to tap into the resources of the telecom giants. I casually strolled into a phone showroom nearby, a nice, well lit place, looking every bit like a potential customer. Since it was the lunch hour, customers were few and in a couple of minutes I found myself face to face with a slim, smart and smiling sales assistant that was peddling slim, smart but non-smiling phones. I brought her up to speed on my situation and requested her to look up the place and give me the location. Well manicured fingers caressed an ipad screen and in less than 30 seconds, she gave me the phone number and location of the place written out on a piece of paper. I'm now officially in love with
I must now let my readers in on a secret about Japan: they don't care much for naming their streets. That's right, no street names.Addresses in Japan are merely cryptic alpha numeric clues based on a complex, 3 dimensional, coordinate system, intended to take you in the general direction of your destination. In confusing circles. They overcame this problem by building great cars to drive around asking for directions. They have a numbering system that was invented when Tokyo was a collection of a few straw huts and everyone knew each other by first name and have never bothered to update it. E-mail may have been developed only so that the Japanese could finally stop delivering letters.
On the one hand we have very detailed addresses like we do in Chennai that has a lot of information but actually conveys very little:
Door No 12/4-D (Old No. 148/73-M), II Floor, Plot No: 26
14th Lane, 6th Cross Street, VII Sector,
KK Nagar, Chennai 78.
and on the other, we have addresses in Japanese that are more like a cryptic message.
 |
| A sample Japanese address |
So knowing pretty well that the address she had handed me in a piece of paper was of very little value, I pestered her for directions. But beyond (literally) pointing me in the direction and saying something about a Starbucks and a DVD store, she couldn't do much as some real customers that were actually willing to do some business had arrived. Stepping out and heading in the direction she had pointed me to, I spotted the Starbuck's logo a couple of blocks away and walked over there. After a bit of walking down small alleys, I did run into a store selling music CDs. And with that, I had run out of further directions.
Still refusing to settle for a burger, I looked around for another phone show room. Thankfully, I located one not too far, walked in and repeated the routine. The sales attendant confirmed that I had been doing well and gave me almost turn by turn directions. She also printed out the map and drew lines for me to follow and highlighted a police booth to check in should I get lost. I'm now officially in love with
I finally arrived at RajMahal, Shibuya. I was informed that the Shinjuku branch had closed a few years earlier. They had also done away with lunch buffet altogether. I had to settle for a set lunch with nan, curry, rice and a lassi.
