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By Root 699 0

streets. Mobs of people surged in never-ending waves toward Shibuya station to meet friends and lovers by the statue of a dog. The dog, it was explained to me, had continued to show up every day at the station, long after its master had died. That kind of dedication impresses the Japanese and a statue was erected in the pooch's honor; it's one of the most popular meeting places in the city. Nearby the narrow, neon-lit streets swam with, more nightclubs, bars, restaurants, screaming, building-high video screens whose exhortations made my molars shake like tuning forks.

We found a shabu-shabu joint, a crowded tatami room where there were no other Westerners, and managed to contort our limbs under and around the low table. A big wok filled with broth was heated up for us, and a uniformed attendant arrived with an Everest-high heap of meat, vegetables, seafood and noodles. We kicked off the meal with hot sake, heated with grilled fish bones. The fish oil that collected on the top was ignited before drinking, and the flavor was heavily aromatic, with fumes that seemed to penetrate brain tissue immediately. Item by item, according to cooking time, the food was added to the oil - like a giant fondue. When everything had been deposited into the wok, we were left to our own devices, save frequent refills of chilled sake.

I did not want to leave. I had only begun to eat. There were a million restaurants, bars, temples, back alleys, nightclubs, neighborhoods and markets to explore. Fully feeling the effects of the sake, I was seriously considering burning my passport, trading my jeans and leather jacket for a dirty seersucker suit and disappearing into the exotic East. This . . . this was excitement, romance, adventure - and there was so much more of it, too much more of it for even another month, another year, another decade to adequately contain my investigations. I knew I could live here now. I'd learned a few things, not much, but enough to negotiate traffic, feed myself, get drunk, get around town. I pictured myself as a character like Greene's Scobie in Africa, or the narrator of The Quiet American in Saigon, even Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, my head swimming with all sorts of romantically squalid notions. At two o'clock in the morning, the streets still swarming with young Japanese in American sports cars, girls sitting on the back of convertibles, gangsters and whores emerging from nightclubs, moving on to the next place, shirtless gaijins howling at the moon from upstairs whorehouses, I staggered down dark back streets, hit some more bars and, finding myself incongruously hungry again, and wanting to soak up some of the sea of alcohol in my stomach, committed the ultimate in Tokyo faux pas - I ate a McDonald's hamburger while I walked. The trains shut down at eleven-thirty, and most of Tokyo, it seemed, preferred to stay out all night to taking a taxi. One could, Philippe had explained before leaving me off at Roppongi Crossing, borrow money to get home from almost any policeman if drunk and unexpectedly short of funds. The idea of not returning the next day to repay the debt was, in typically Japanese thinking, unthinkable.

I walked, unsteadily, for hours, stopped off for a final drink, managed, somehow, to get back to my apartment and call Nancy.

She'd laid on some fresh bialys from Columbia Bagels, and some Krispy Kreme donuts for my return. I began packing.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A CHEF?

A COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

FOR CULINARY STUDENTS, LINE cooks looking to move up in the world, newcomers to the business - and the otherwise unemployables who make up so much of our workforce - I have a few nuggets of advice, the boiled-down wisdom of twenty-five years of doing right and doing wrong in the restaurant industry.

For the growing number of people who are considering becoming a professional chef as a second career I have some advice, too. In fact, let's dispose of you first:

So you want to be a chef? You really, really, really want to be a chef? If you've been working in another line of business, have been accustomed to