Touring with the Japanese

Photograph: Aaron M. Cohen

Their tour:
When I meet Shin, a finance student who’s taking a year off to travel America, he looks pretty much how you’d imagine a Japanese tourist would look when trying to be inconspicuous in New York—dark clothes, small camera. A few minutes later, his pal from the hostel, Shyoichiro, joins us in the heart of Times Square. “Nice to meet you very much,” he says with his soft lisp, unsure whether to bow or offer his hand. He’s extremely tall and has red hair but is, like Shin, otherwise stereotypically Japanese: exceedingly polite, almost always standing with his hands folded behind his back.

A Japanophile, I see tourists like this every day and wonder, What are they really thinking—about America, about New York? And would they tell me?We hook up with one more friend—Mihoko—and let Shin plan the morning. So he sets off in a random direction and, to Mihoko’s delight, falls into the Gap (1466 Broadway at 42nd St, 212-382-4500). “In New York you can buy anything!” Shin says. “Florida was so boring!” All three tell me there is much more color in American fashion, but soon, Shin wants to leave. He’s barely five feet tall and not interested in the kids’ section. So we head out to Toys “R” Us (1514 Broadway at 44th St, 646-366-8800) but are stopped short by the stagehand-union strikers.

Mihoko and Shin had both told me the one thing they really wanted to do in New York was see a Broadway show. “Because of them I cannot see?” Shin asks, standing beneath the Lion King marquee and barely concealing his frustration. Shyoichiro takes a different approach: He crosses the barrier and poses for photographs with an ear-to-ear grin and a picket sign.

TONY’s tour:
We’re joined by Aya, another student, and TONY takes over. We head to cheese-and-meat joint Kashkaval (856 Ninth Ave between 55th and 56th Sts, 212-581-8282) for lunch. Aya, Shyoichiro and Mihoko all get the American equivalent of yakitori—chicken kebabs. Shin orders a meat and cheese platter and pokes everything questioningly. Mihoko, who earlier had said, “New York food is terrible,” tells me she’s changed her mind.

On the way to Chelsea—the gang requested an art tour—I tell them (for the fifth time) they don’t have to be so polite. So far, when they don’t have anything nice to say, they’ve said something nice anyway. Emboldened, Aya walks up and tells me that New York is “dirty and it sometimes smells very bad, never like that in Japan,” but the rest of the gang insists the city is clean. I flick my cigarette butt onto the sidewalk. There is stunned silence. We keep walking.

At the Sean Kelly Gallery (528 W 29th St between Tenth and Eleventh Aves, 212-239-1181), we are all struck dumb by Antony Gormley’s installation, Blind Light, a room-size glass enclosure filled with swirling mists so thick, we all disappear just a few inches from one another. “There is nothing like this in Japan,” Mihoko tells me, and everyone agrees.

There is also nothing like Margaret Cho. In lieu of a Broadway show, we have tix for the Sensuous Woman at The Zipper Factory (336 W 37th St between Eighth and Ninth Aves, 212-352-3101), and from the half-nude, sequined, feather-fanned, overly rouged burlesque opening until the fully nude, triumphantly bizarre finale, everyone’s reaction is the same as Aya’s: shock. She laughs uncontrollably at the slapstick. And when she asks, “What is this anal?” my careful reply is met with wider eyes than the pasties-wearing little-person stripper provoked.

After, we have dinner at the restaurant of Shyochiro’s choosing—Tad’s Steaks (152 W 34th St between Sixth and Seventh Aves, 212-630-0318) for “porku chopu!”—and laughed over the show. At one point, star Ryan Huffington had given Shin a liberal crotch-to-the-face pressing. “My favorite thing of the day was the show,” says Shin. “Yes, yes.” Does he mean that, or is he just being polite?

—Eli Zwillenberg

Factoid: 260,000 Japanese folks will visit NYC this year