Italian food in Japan

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Location: Tokyo, Japan

When I was in Japan, Italian food was very popular.

Foreign restaurants in Japan seemed rare, but I did see several restaurants that only served Italian food. And most of the Japanese restaurants I went to had a section of their menu devoted to Italian food. I suppose everybody in the world likes Italian food.

At one point I was eating at a restaurant in Akihabara. Half the menu was Japanese and the other half was Italian. The restaurant was going for a romantic atmosphere, with dim lighting and a candle on each table.

There was a young couple seated towards the front of the restaurant. Everything about their body language said they were on a first date. The woman had ordered Japanese food. The man had ordered a plate of spaghetti. I wonder if he had ordered foreign food to seem cosmopolitan.

The spaghetti had been served with a fork. He obviously had no idea that you're supposed to twirl noodles around a fork. He kept inserting his fork into the side of the spaghetti and lifting it straight up. All the noodles would slide off the fork as he lifted it. Once in a while, one or two well-balanced noodles would stay on his fork and he would be able to eat.

The entire time, he was trying to appear charming and charismatic to his date. But every time she looked away, he would scowl at the fork.

It was interesting to realize that, as unfamiliar as I had been with chopsticks, there was some guy in Japan who was equally unfamiliar with a fork.

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