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By Root 659 0

in the customs and practices of professional gamblers, heroin seekers or sexual adventurers-though at one time it would have greatly appealed to me. I didn't think I'd be shipping out on a great big clipper ship (as Lou Reed puts it), wandering the back streets of Peshawar or sampling live monkey brain in the Golden Triangle. My personal journey, I thought, was pretty much over. I was comfortably ensconsed in secure digs, with a wife who still remarkably - found me to be amusing on occasion. I had a job I loved, in a successful restaurant . . . and I was alive, for chrissakes! I was still around! Though the game had long since gone into overtime, I still had a few moves left in me, and I was content to play them out where I'd started - New York City, the place I believed, heart and soul, to be the center of the world.

So it came as a surprise when one of the two partners at Les Halles, Philippe Lajaunie - a man I'd barely conversed with up to that time - approached me one spring afternoon and said, 'Chef, we'd like you to go to Tokyo. Make the food look and taste like it does in New York.'

Now, Brasserie Les Halles is a much-loved New York institution, serving authentic French workingman's fare to hordes of diners each night. I'm an American, whatever my lineage, so it threw me off-guard to be asked if I'd care to go halfway around the world to consult and advise a French chef - in Japan - on the fine points of cassoulet, navarin d'agneau, frisee aux lardons and boudin noir at Les Halles Tokyo.

But my masters, Philippe (a Frenchman) and Jose de Meireilles (a Portuguese francophile), seemed convinced enough of my mystical connection to the food they clearly adore to pack me on to a plane and send me jetting off to Tokyo for a week. It was a daunting and unusual assignment and I was going alone - my wife would not be joining me.

My biggest concern was the flight: fourteen hours in the air, and no smoking(!) I scored some Valium before leaving for the airport, thinking maybe I could knock myself out and sleep through the ordeal. Unfortunately, as my Israeli-navigated town car swung into the Kennedy Airport environs, I couldn't find the damn pills. I tore frantically through my pockets and carry-on luggage, near tears, cursing myself, my wife, God and everybody else who might be responsible for this hideous situation.

I checked my knives through, not wanting to carry them on, and was soon dug in, at 11 A.M., at the bar by the departure gate: last stop for degenerate smokers. My companions were a very unhappy-looking bunch of Asia veterans. Like me, they were chain-smoking and drinking beer with grim, determined expressions on their faces. A Chinese gentleman next to me, apropos of nothing, shook his head, blew smoke out of his nose and said, 'Sleeping pill. Only thing to do is sleep. Fourteen hour to Narita. Long time.' This did not improve my mood. Another bar customer, an MP headed to South Korea to pick up a prisoner, slammed back another draft and described the horror of business class to the other side of the world. He too shook his head, lips pursed, resigned to his fate. A red-faced Aussie with a five-hour layover waiting for him on the Tokyo end, advised me to have another beer - at least. 'Or three, mate. Nothing to do but bloody sleep.' Yeah, right, I thought. Got any Demerol?

As a back-up, I had acquired a few nicotine patches. I rolled up my left sleeve and slapped one directly over a vein, hoping for the best as they sounded final boarding.

The flight was endless. The in-flight movie was a slight improvement over looking out the window: a Japanese film about, as best as I could gather, fly-fishing. Guys standing around in waders, philosophizing about carp in a language I couldn't understand, had a pleasantly somnolent effect and I managed, with the help of many more beers, to pass out for a few hours.

I should point out, by the way, that I know nothing about Japan. Oh, sure, I've seen The Seven Samurai and Rashomon and Yojimbo and the Kurosawa policiers, and Sonny Chiba and Gidrah versus Mecha-Godzilla for