The Exotic Fish, My Flashlight,
and Monkey Waiters










I remember my son, Sage, getting upset only three times when he was very young. And each of these times he was quite inconsolable.

Once, we were given tropical fish and a tank. I thought the tank needed one more so I took Sage to a pet store and he picked out a fish. We brought it back in the small plastic bag you get, but when I put our new pet in the tank with the other fish, Sage cried.

He wanted to eat it. My wife took him to Citarella's to get another fish that was for eating, but Sage remained insistent on the one he and I had picked out. Not even a beautiful pink snapper could entice him.

When I first saw the movie Tampopo, I thought it was funny but too exaggerated - no one obsesses about food like they show in the movie. Then I married a Japanese girl and slowly began to realize as I frequented Japan, the movie was an understatement. The Japanese have a different relationship to food than all others and while my son was half Japanese, his tongue genes were inherited entirely from his mother.

Another time, Sage cried was when we showed him a flashlight for the first time. We sat on the bed and he put the the flashlight to my ear and looked in the other one. He was upset because he couldn't see the light through my empty head. What do you say to someone who is disappointed about such a thing?

The third time was entirely my wife's fault. We were headed to Chinatown in Yokohama. She was trying to get him excited about going to a restaurant there called something like "Monkichi." Somehow he got it in his head that it was a monkey restaurant and imagined monkeys serving us Chinese food. With such expectations, how could anyone not be disappointed? Sage cried until he fell asleep at the restaurant and missed the meal.

Never underestimate the Japanese, however. Last year we saw in the newspaper that a restaurant in Tokyo has monkeys which bring you your food.