It's like standing face to face with the wish-granting genie but completely unable to give her bottle a rub. It's like cunjuring from the necronomicon word for word, only to find the last two pages ripped out. It's like unrolling the secret treasure map, washed up on shore, only to discover a water mark desecrating the precious X.

So it is visiting Tokyo Japan. Everything is familiar, everything recognizable and "the same". The system here is a well oiled machine that like a macintosh laptop, "works". The world is here to buy, to navigate, to explore - like any massive metropolitan area, yours for the taking. Except for one thing: you don't know the magick word. You forgot the secret handshake. Your skeleton came up missing.

I know they say English is the second language here, but I'm not sure how fluent their scholastic linguistic studies are. Only slightly better than my Japanese studies apparently. And unlike Brazil, where the locals have all day long to interpret body language and gestures, I have been discredited (okay, ignored) by more than a few urban business people upon realizing I don't speak the language.

Which only makes it more of an adventure to find raw food to eat. Japanese are certainly not what I call fruit worshipers. When vegetables are served, they are steamed, cooked, and sugar glazed to death (isn't this where macrobiotics came from?). The major grocery store in Shiba Park has a very small selection of mostly imported produce, all of which is wrapped in plastic. I had much better luck at the tiny local dive, but paid $7 US for two peaches. The real fun though happened at the famous fish market this morning. Arrive before 7am to get a glance of as many wriggling, sometimes-eyeless, bigger-than-thou fresh fish, and when you've had your fill of dry ice and the sensual aroma, wander endlessly through isles of fresh produce up for scrutiny and auction. The famous fish market is where professionals in the catering, grocery and restaurant industries come to procure palate after palate, and it seems melons, cucumbers, bok choy, okra, peaches, plums, and (joy of mineral joy) all the seaweed in the world, are the staples of the the famous fish market's local produce fare.

I'm not going to call it a challenge, for that would certainly limit my ability to enjoy myself here in Japan. I will instead consciously call it an adventure, and an adventure it has been learning how to make a telephone call, use the quiet, cushy, velvet seat subway, search out food, have a simple exchange of words or figure out what to do with the hole in the ground behind stall doors they call public restrooms. I abhor being challenged. I'm an expert at adventures.

Nevertheless, I feel like I am looking through the peep show window as the curtain closes, without another quarter to put in. I understand how this system works. It is not foreign at all. Money, perhaps more than in the United States, is "how to be a part of the family" here. Be on time, follow the rules, use the paper tickets, be responsible and respectful. I understand how to fit in, but again it seems I am standing at the speak-easy door, listening to bacchus madness erupting from inside, unable to remember the secret knock that would open the door.

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