It's 0420hrs on 17th October 2018 and I've just woken up, suddenly, after what can only be described as an aggressive, violent dream. I regained consciousness feeling aggrieved. The dream involved a row about something out in the open air, in a field in which there were some rocks and a grey concrete path running along one edge. To one side of the path a wooden fence, bushes, the backs of houses. I'm in the UK, but exactly where I don't know. There are two, possibly three, people on one side of the argument and me (and possibly somebody else) on the other. For some reason I threaten throwing rocks and a battle of sorts commences until a passer-by suggests it's unreasonable behaviour and threatens to get involved. Tensions ease and suddenly I'm in Tokyo, lying in bed staring at the ceiling and feeling anxious.
Yesterday morning when I woke up I realised I wasn't happy with the hotel's 'no breakfast' policy. Generally, I don't like 'no' policies and prefer to use the word 'yes'. Where the no breakfast policy is concerned, I wouldn't mind so much if going out for breakfast was a straightforward affair, but it isn't. Not only is there not much open at 0700hrs – just people preparing to open up shop and office workers making their way to work – but the major problem is one of language. Put bluntly, my Japanese is non-existent, which makes communication with people whose grasp of the English language is equally poor very difficult, although eventually we get there and all is well.
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| My hotel – where small is beautiful... |
I have my principles when it comes to food and I won't eat in a McDonald's unless it's a life or death situation. However, yesterday morning, as I strode purposefully along Tokyo's Roppongi streets, I found myself inextricably drawn towards a two-storey building housing a McCafé and a conventional McDonald's on the first floor. Standing in front of the brightly-coloured menu above the servery counter, I checked out the photographs of 'the McDonald's Breakfast' – a kind of tray affair with scrambled egg, hash brown, a pork (or maybe it was beef) patty and a McMuffin with egg (something of that order). The restaurant was fairly crowded for 0700hrs and is open 24 hours.
As I stared at the menu, weighing things up in my mind, the servery assistant stared back at me wondering what my decision might be; I took a step back, signalled that I wasn't quite sure what to do and then walked over to the window where I looked down and saw
Precious Coffee Moments below me. The reason I was in McDonald's and not across the road, in what is turning out to be my favourite little café, is that the café's menu is limited and I wanted something more substantial. On Monday morning, my breakfast consisted of a BLT – quite a nice BLT, but a little on the insubstantial side in terms of overall size (a bit like my hotel room).
I decided not to worry about the language barrier, throw caution to the wind and ask for a peppermint tea, which was another problem I was having. It was easy to order a mint tea in a Starbucks on Sunday afternoon, but would my request be met with frowns at
Precious Coffee Moments? There was only one way to find out.
"Milk?"
"No, mint. Peppermint?"
"Milk?"
The person behind the counter frowned and pointed at photographs of cups of tea. "Milk?"
In the end I gave up. "Yes, milk," I answered.
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| Precious Coffee Moments – it's my favourite place... |
I was handed a small plastic tray, quite a dainty plastic tray as it happened, imitation wood, but obviously plastic, possibly Melamine, and on the tray was a white cup and saucer, a small receptacle for the discarded tea bag and a wrapped tissue. The tea was very milky. So milky that I figured it was a kind of latte in the world of tea, the 'tea equivalent' if such a thing exists. I wasn't 100% sure of what to expect in terms of the taste experience, although I had a pretty good idea. In short, I wasn't impressed and with nothing else to do – no newspapers to read – I opened a notebook and started to write a version of what you're reading now. I was working on the basis that if anybody looked over my shoulder at what I was writing, they wouldn't be able to decipher it.
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| Toast and a hard-boiled egg plus milky tea... |
In addition to the tea I had ordered what I thought was buttered toast. I wasn't wrong, but the toast, a huge slab of bread about two inches thick, toasted on top with butter melting through it, was accompanied by an egg, a white egg, cold to the touch because it had come straight from the fridge. I hadn't noticed it on the photograph at the counter when I made the order. I started to wonder: was it a hard-boiled egg or was it raw? I was in Japan where culinary traditions are way different to what they are in the UK and I figured it could be a raw egg. How to find out without making a huge mess? Perhaps it was some kind of Japanese breakfast delicacy that everybody knew about except me. Tentatively, I picked up the egg and lightly tapped it on the table. The last thing I wanted was raw egg on my face and all over my shirt and trousers. How would I explain that away at the conference I was about to attend? "You'll never guess what happened" I might start off as my colleagues scrutinise the mess they see before them.
Fortunately, all was fine, it was a hard boiled egg with a wonderfully yellow yoke, but surprisingly little in the way of taste, which I put down to its refrigerated state. Had it been warm and seasoned with salt and pepper, it might have been better. Prior to cracking (and eating) the hard-boiled egg, I heard myself saying, not out loud or even barely audible: "I haven't flown 12 hours in a plane to be left with egg on my face and all over my freshly creased shirt and trousers."
My hotel not only 'doesn't do breakfast', it also dispenses with a wardrobe, offering instead two coathangers and a couple of hooks. As you might imagine, my room – make that cell – looks like a teenager's bedroom and I am quite literally living out of a suitcase and relying on the creases in my shirts falling out as I walk the short distance to the conference venue.
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| This time a less milky tea and plain toast... |
After eating the egg and the toast I realised that I was still hungry. Don't forget that when I normally stay in a hotel, breakfast is the best meal of the day. I look forward to the servery crammed with pastries and bread rolls, the iced display of yoghurts and the colourful array of fresh fruit, not forgetting the hot food, the sausages, baked beans, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, bacon and diced and fried squares of potato. I pine at the little boxes of cereal – my hotel treat a small box of CoCo Pops or even a soup kettle full with porridge oats. I have a bowl of porridge, not the whole kettle, I hasten to add. But not today. I am limited to a hard-boiled egg and a very thick slice of buttered toast and now, perhaps, another slice of toast but without the egg. I returned to the counter and this time ordered a 'normal' black tea and, of course, the toast.
Later, I foraged for food, like a squirrel looking for the nuts he'd previously buried but had forgotten where. Fortunately conferences have tea and coffee breaks and when you're in a Grand Hyatt you can bet the snacks on offer are pretty much top shelf – chocolates, mini pastries, tiny biscuits, Madeleines, chocolate mousse. I stocked up and realised it would be a bit rich to complain (as I have done here) about Japanese breakfasts. I really can't moan, can I? People are different the world over, they have different habits, different traditions, different ways of life, and I was fortunate enough to be in their world experiencing it first hand. I figured the full English breakfast could wait for a few days – not that I eat a full English breakfast.
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| Where tea and coffee break snacks fill a gap... |
It's 0531hrs, a full 90 minutes since I awoke baffled and aggrieved. I have two choices: go back to bed and try to sleep (for all of a couple hours) or remain awake, put on some clothes and check out what Tokyo's streets have to offer at such an ungodly hour? I think I'll crawl back to bed.
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