Gastronomic habits are hard to change. That was conventional wisdom as regards Japanese food when I arrived here more than four decades ago. After all, back then, there were said to be only about a dozen Japanese restaurants in this city.
Among them were the rather reputable one rumored to be run by the former mistress of a prime minster and also the one in the walkup building where a young Puerto Rican, Jorge Perez, kindly shared his apartment with me.
The latter, which was on the second floor — Jorge's apartment was on the third — specialized in udon, amazingly, in retrospect. Once I ate there with Gerow Reece, a friend from my Kyoto days. A while after we started, Gerow, who had studied Japanese calligraphy for years, rested his chopsticks, smiled his puckish smile, and said: You eat noodles like a gaijin! Without making any noise, that is.