Peru

One fine evening a couple of weeks ago I was walking around downtown Takasaki by myself, feeling hungry. Not wanting to be the girl who sits alone at an actual restaurant, I ducked into Sky Turk, a fast-food type restaurant run by a Turkish guy who works alone selling kebobs and pitas. I was the only customer in the restaurant, besides a college-aged Japanese boy chain smoking at the counter (a personal friend of the owner, I later discovered). The owner, who speaks pretty good English, started to chat with me, and soon found out that even though I live in Japan, my heart is still in some Spanish-speaking country.

“Spanish?!” he asked, incredulously. “Do you know Mr. So-and-So from Peru?”

I actually didn’t know Mr. So-and-So from Peru, and told him so.

“Well, that’s just something we’ll have to remedy,” he said, although not in those exact words.

A week later, I showed back up at the restaurant to meet this famous Peruvian. He’s a nice-looking guy somewhere in his 30s, who has been living in Japan off and on for several years now. Not only does he speak his native Spanish, but perfect Japanese and English as well. We sat down at a table and immediately started chatting in Spanish, while the Turkish owner and ubiquitous chain-smoker gawked at us and murmured, “I don’t understand a thing” over and over in Japanese. It was nice to be able to communicate fluidly in a foreign language for the first time in a while, although I noticed my espanol is taking on some distinctly Japanese characteristics. Mr. S and I decided to get together the following week and enjoy all the Peru Isesaki City has to offer.

I’d been to Isesaki a couple of times before, but only ever with Japanese people. It was actually kind of natsukashii (nostalglic?) to be back at Isesaki Station without having Shogo there. This time, though, I got to see the South American side of the city.

Mr. S and I took the train in and walked a couple of blocks to El Kero Peruvian Restaurant. It’s a little place about the size of my apartment (not very big, I mean) crammed with wooden tables and chairs and Peruvian decorations all over the walls. A television hung from the ceiling in one corner, blasting Latin American hits from across the years. How can I describe the feeling of listening to Elvis Crespo sing “Suavemente” (throwing me back to Cuernavaca, Mexico in 2001), while studying a menu of Peruvian food in some little city in Japan?

We split roasted chicken, some kind of cold sliced potato/mayonnaise deliciousness, a salad, and a beef/vegetable dish. It was truly delicious! After lunch, I mentioned coffee and dessert, and he told me he knew of just the place. Unfortunately, since we had taken the train and not driven, we would have to take a bus across town to get there.

So we walked back to Isesaki Station, just barely caught the bus, and got off about a kilometer away from where the Peruvian Cafe was supposed to be. Twenty minutes later we were still wandering around, but after asking a few people for directions we finally got on the right track.

We’d been walking around for another fifteen or twenty minutes, cracking jokes at how long it was taking and how no one knew where it was.

“Ja ja,” Mr. S said. “Ahora sólo falta que esté cerrado!” (Now all we need is for it to be closed!)

When we finally got there, I noticed four heavy-set Peruvian men standing on the other side of the street looking at the restaurant with their arms folded over their chests. The place is called Mi Casita Peruvian Café, and it’s the kind of place that serves sandwiches and cakes and hot beverages. I felt a little awkward, but tried to go in, anyway.

Yep. That’s all we needed. It was closed.

Mr. S called across the street, “So what’s up? It’s closed?”

“I don’t know,” they called back. “We’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes but they won’t open.”

I looked at the closed glass door. Hidden behind the random Christmas swirls was the schedule. Sundays were 9:00-1:00 and 6:00-10:00.

“Looks like they’ll be closed another three hours,” I said.

“Well, damn,” one of the men swore. “I’m starving. Now what do we do?”

“Do you want to go here? Do you want to go to McDonald’s?” asked another guy.

“I don’t care, as long as I can eat something.”

“Hey man, did y'all eat?" A third man, taller and leaner than the other guys, directed himself at us.

“Yeah, at this place called El Kero. Do you know it?”

“Never been. Is it any good?”

“It’s delicious.”

“All right, let’s go, then. Hey, you guys need a ride back to the station?” the driver looked back over his shoulder as they started to go off.

“That would be great,” Mr. S replied. “We’ve been walking for a long time.”

“Well come on, no problem. Y’all can sit in the back. If we were back home you two could sit up front but you know here the cops’ll see you and pull us over.”

“Tell me about it.”

The five of us piled into his Honda Fit—four beefy strangers, Mr. S, and me. Two of the biggest guys got in the front, and the rest of us squashed together in the back, me pressed between Mr. S and the passenger side door. Reggaeton poured from the speakers; the men’s chatter rising above it.

“Hey man, you got Facebook?” the driver called back to ask Mr. S.

“Yeah, I’m on there,” Mr. S replied. “Look me up.” He gave his name.

I repressed a sudden desire to burst out laughing at this macho man talking about Facebook. Instead, I concentrated on the rest of their conversation, now on to complaining why the previous restaurant had been closed, but so full of unfamiliar words and slang that I could only catch the basic gist of what they were saying. Something about having to call the owner and complain. “I ain’t gonna do it, YOU do it.”

Ten minutes later we arrived back in downtown Isesaki.

“You can let us off anywhere,” Mr. S told our new friends. “We can walk from here.”

“OK, cool,” said the driver, and turned left down one of the streets. “Is here OK?”

“Sure, it’s fi—” started to say Mr. S when suddenly “Oh SHIT!” cried the guy sitting in the front. “It’s a one way street!”

And it was.

Even though the road was two-laned, it was meant for two lanes of traffic going in the same direction. Our lane just happened to be empty. To make matters even worse, a policeman sat in his police car in the lane beside us. He was sandwiched in between two other cars, so he couldn’t stop us, but

“Oh shit, what if he gets my license plate?” whined the driver.

He gunned the car, and took a succession of turns through little side streets until he felt he had gotten sufficiently far away. He stopped again a few minutes later to let us out, this time on a two-lane street.

“I’m really sorry,” Mr. S told him. “It’s our fault you had to stop.”

“It’s OK,” said one of the guys in the back. “It’s his fault for being a dumbass and going down a one-way street.”

“I didn’t know it was a one-way street!” shot back the driver.

“Muchas, muchas gracias,” I said, the first thing I’d said since getting in the car. I opened the door and got out onto safe ground. “Adiós.”

“Adiós.”

It was kind of these strangers to offer us a ride back to town, kind of them to have pity on us for being one of them, and kind of them to risk getting a ticket for reckless driving. Let's hope nothing happens to them.

We only had an hour or so in Isesaki before we had to head back to Maebashi, so we went to a little Peruvian store near the station and looked around. It was similar to the Mexican stores back in North Carolina, except that there weren’t any Mexican products. There were lots of spices and teas I didn’t recognize, shelves full of dusty plastic-wrapped books in Spanish, and assorted South American snacks and beverages. I got some camote and banana chips again like I did when I was in Ota. Then it was time to go.

What a fun day it had been in Peru! But it was time to go back. We walked to the train station, bought our tickets, and took the train back to Japan.