My plans for the day, such as they were, were thwarted. A dreary drizzle in the morning became a downpour as slate-gray clouds emptied their contents onto the streets of Tokyo below. This is a maritime climate, which means that the temperature remained around 75 degrees Fahrenheit. The late-summer mugginess lay just behind the rain, waiting to pounce.
I watched the rain from my apartment. Alternately reviewing my Facebook page and staring a the ceiling, I waited for the rain to stop. By 6:30pm, it was still raining. My cupboards were bare and it was dinner time. Good Tokyoite that I am, I pulled on rain jacket and my Doc Marten's (for first time since I've been here), grabbed my trusty umbrella, and headed out into the twilight drizzle in search of dinner.
I'm not a restaurant critic, but I play one on the internet. I like food a great deal, yet lack the skill or the motivation to do more than open cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli (a full serving of vegetables in each can!) or packages prepared by the good people at Hormel and heat them in the microwave. Multivitamin pills fend of rickets and scurvy. Yet there are restaurants in this city - more than anywhere else. Around 160,000 known eateries are here. For comparison, Paris has about 16,000. Being a tanshin funin, or geographical bachelor, I eat out often. Yesterday was oysters on the half-shell at Ebisu Garden Place, the day before was a kaiten-zushi (conveyor-belt sushi) place near Ebisu station. Tonight, I wanted something substantial. It had to be Italian.
I had kept my eye on a likely place for about a month. Calling itself Palermo, this place seemed from the outside like a SBarro pizzeria. Nice, cheap, good-eating food. Splashing through the puddles and traffic, I climbed the stairs to the second floor. I shook my umbrella and put it in the handy umbrella stand outside, then entered. Greeted by the usual, but very un-Italian, "Irashaimase!" from the staff, I sat down. Vinyl table cloths, so far, so good - I wanted good and cheap, not outstanding and exorbitant. Perusing the menu, I ordered a small decanter of house red wine (three glasses for the price of two), a personal pepperoni pizza (the only size you'll get in most Japanese pizza places), and a green salad. The total should be less than 2800 yen, or about $30. Nice! No bread, no water, no frills.
The salad came quite quickly, and I checked it for anything repulsive. (Japanese chefs have a cute habit of inserting slimy surprises into salads). Finding nothing stranger than asparagus, I cleaned my plate. Take that, scurvy! Then, I waited...
I should explain that in Japan, just like in Iceland, one does not tip anyone. It is considered demeaning. How cool! No awkward moments with porters at the hotel or taxi drivers. A 10% service charge is automatically added to everyone's bill. Everyone works for the love of their chosen profession - right?
In countries where this is the custom, e.g. Japan and most of Europe, it is my experience that restaurant service generally sucks. Your average customer at a neighborhood Denny's in the U.S. is going to get far better service, not to mention endless free refills of soft drinks, water and coffee. The server will check on you at least once every ten minutes. Think about it; in your local family restaurant, if you had to hunt your server down for a refill of your gallon-sized glass of Diet Coke or the check, you'd be fuming. You might complain to the manager. You might even... lower the tip. If you were angry enough, you might even not leave a tip at all. As we all know from watching Reservoir Dogs, this rarely happens. But it just might, and wait-staff and customers know it. The 10% service charge is essentially a form of socialism. In the workers' paradise of a Japanese or European restaurant, a server gets paid no matter what. Run your ass off and cater to the customers' every desire - 10%. Drop off the chow late and then piss off outside for a smoke and a chat with your girlfriend on your cell phone - 10%. Human nature being what it is, and yes the Japanese are human, most servers opt for the second option, albeit not usually that egregious. Ritualized politeness does not equal effectiveness.
I pondered this fact as my wait for my microwave-sized pizza reached its twentieth minute. The smell of burning pepperoni emanating from the kitchen hinted that something was amiss. A few more minutes elapsed and my waiter, he of the frosted hair, informed me that my pizza would be delayed. No, "would you like a drink on the house while you wait" or "we won't charge you for your appetizer" or any of the things viewers of Last Restaurant Standing or Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares have come to expect.
The pizza, when it came, was nice. It would have been nicer forty minutes earlier. It would have been even nicer if I had not had to get up and hunt-down my waiter to get the check. (I paid him in ten and fifty yen coins as part of my passive-aggressive revenge).
As I splashed back up the hill towards home through the rain, I thought about the service charge and the Palermo restaurant. Palermo. Sicily. The Mafia. The Sopranos. Paulie Walnuts. What would Paulie, the warm-up suit-wearing, white haired, lovable psychopath, think of such goings-on in a Italian restaurant? The next time anyone tries to convince you that instituting a service charge scheme in the US is a good idea, I have a suggestion: channel your inner Paulie. Pick up the heaviest object at hand, or perhaps a golf club or a tire iron. Then, hit them - hard - in the kneecap. Ciao!
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