Saizeriya and the Last True Beauty

Mike Blackwell
Aug 24, 2017 · 7 min read

august 1st, 2017

When was the last time something truly beautiful happened?

I asked myself this question tonight. When was the last time I remember something truly beautiful happening?

I asked myself this question because I was thinking about Japan. I wrote half of an essay about my first day in Japan. I paused in the exact middle. I went to look at something. I went to look for a location on Google Maps Street View. I found it. I sat there for a few minutes. I began to question whether it is possible for one human to express to another human how important a restaurant can be.

I was looking at the Saizeriya near Hatagaya Station in Shinjuku. It is located on a street corner at the intersection of a three-lane highway and a single-car-width side street. The Saizeriya is underground. There is a small diagonal staircase on the street corner that leads down to the entrance. Above the Saizeriya is a Tsutaya bookstore. On the other side of the side street, there is a restaurant called “Gasuto”. I think it is meant to be thought of as “Gusto!”, but I could never help thinking of it as “Gas Stop”.

I went to this Saizeriya once. My friend and I were staying at a hotel nearby. We were in Tokyo for two days. This was my fourth time in Tokyo. This was my third night in Tokyo. After the two days, we were going to meet two other friends in Osaka. At the moment, these two friends were staying in Chiba with relatives. These two friends included a girl who I was in love with.

As soon as we arrived at the hotel, I went on the internet and found the nearest Saizeriya. My friend said that he was sick of Saizeriya. I said that there is no way I am missing my last chance to eat Saizeriya in Tokyo.

Saizeriya is a chain of Italian family-restaurants in Japan. They serve Japanese approximations of Italian food. They will give you a personal pizza for 300 yen. For another 300 yen, they will give you a large plate of pasta. For 160 yen, you get access to the drink bar, where you can refill drinks forever. It is common practice to order at least 2–3 meals at a Saizeriya.

I ordered a salami pizza, a hamburger steak, a slice of back bacon, and a small italian sausage. My friend and I shared a plate of chicken wings. I looked around the restaurant. Near the window, there was an older couple sharing a bottle of wine. Around the corner, three high school students were leaning over a textbook. I was in a Saizeriya. At last, I was in a Saizeriya, in Tokyo. I took a picture of our table. I put it on Instagram. I captioned it “living my dream”.

“living the dream”

Six days later, I published a photo on Instagram from another Saizeriya. This one was near Umeda Station in Osaka. The caption was in Japanese. It said “繰り返し、サイゼリヤの哀しみ”. That means, “The never-ending despair of Saizeriya.” On that day, my friend and I had sat in Saizeriya for almost two hours. We didn’t finish our meals. The day before, the girl I loved had flown hundreds of miles away. I would never see her again. I’ve been alone ever since.

I was first introduced to Saizeriya by a friend of a friend. He was showing us around the local train station. He pointed to the 13th floor of a building. Below the window hung a green banner with large red text. It said ‘Saizeriya’. “That’s a shitty Italian restaurant,” my friend of a friend explained. “It’s where all of the high schoolers hang out.” At that moment, Saizeriya carved out a tiny nook in my brain.

A few weeks later, I started to read the archives of a decade-old blog. The blog was about an American living in Tokyo. He mentioned Saizeriya a lot. He described it in detail. I read his descriptions of Saizeriya a few times before this information collided with a memory: the two Saizeriyas in my head suddenly became one. I shot up in bed. I exclaimed, “oh!” I wanted to go to Saizeriya. I wanted to go to Saizeriya, very badly.

I dragged my friends to the Saizeriya the next time we were at the train station. I did not explain my inspiration. I simply stated that I wanted to try shitty Italian food. We were all still new to Japan: we were willing to try anything. I ordered a pizza and a pasta. I drank from the drink bar. I was supremely pleased. The food was absolutely fine. Nothing about the place was particularly notable. I was just happy to know that Saizeriya was real. My friends were less impressed. It suddenly became my dream to visit a Saizeriya in Tokyo.

I tried to bring my friends to Saizeriya relatively often. It only worked some of the time. All in all, I probably went to Saizeriya less than six times.

What is Saizeriya to me? Some sort of inherited passion. A love that originated outside of me, transferred through ancient text into my deprived brain. Saizeriya is a promise of pleasant mundanity in a world that tires me. Every time I create a routine it kills me. I want to escape from everywhere at all times. Saizeriya was an attempt to grasp at an impossible routine. In the end, Saizeriya became a home for my grand, boring despair. What I felt inside of that Final Saizeriya was a microcosm of four months of trivial events I will never forget.

Let’s talk about the last time something truly beautiful happened on this Earth.

It was January 18th, 2016. I sat in a large, heated waiting room in the Umeda Sky Building for three hours with the girl I loved. The Day After Tomorrow had become today. We had no idea what we were supposed to say to each other. We had no idea what was going to happen. Right now, it’s possible that I still love her. It’s impossible to tell. It is actually impossible to tell. Sometimes, across the vastness of space, I receive a signal conveyed through the thickness of the air that tells me that she might still love me.

Eventually, her bus arrived. As this was being announced, “Ask” by The Smiths began to play. We walked out into the frigid air, accompanied by the refrain, “If it’s not love, then it’s the bombs, the bombs, the bombs that will bring us together.” I held her close to me. I kissed the top of her head. I said goodbye. She gave me her umbrella. Her umbrella had a pattern remarkably similar to one of her favourite dresses. She walked towards the bus. She turned to me as she climbed the stairs. I waved. She waved. I turned around. I did not wait for the bus to move. I walked down the street. I crossed the street. I entered a tunnel that ran underneath the train tracks.

Four weeks earlier, I had travelled through this tunnel while it was full of people. My friends and I had been on our way to a German Christmas Market at the Umeda Sky Building. The tunnel felt like it had been created exclusively for this event. We had no idea what galaxy we were existing in.

On this night, the tunnel was empty. It was 11:24pm. It was raining slightly. I held The Umbrella in my hand. I didn’t open it. I just held it in my hand. I was listening to The Blue Hearts’ “Kiss Shite Hoshii” (I want you to kiss me). I thought a thought that I would continue to think for a long time: Kiss Shite Hoshii might be the greatest love song ever written.

I emerged from the tunnel. I had a vague notion of where I was supposed to be. My friend and I had checked into a capsule hotel the night before. It had taken us over an hour to find it. I had to return, somehow. My plan was to return to the train station and locate a map. My plan B was to return to the train station and find a Starbucks or a convenience store with free wi-fi. My plan C was to return to the train station and fall asleep. I was a husk. Every step was a mile long.

I made it to the hotel around midnight. I changed into my underwear. I put on a thin robe. I walked into the lounge. My friend was sitting there. He was playing a game on his laptop. I bought an ice cream bar in a waffle cone from a vending machine. I bought a CC Lemon from another vending machine. I sat down next to him. He took out his headphones. “She’s gone, huh?” he asked.

I chuckled. “Yeah. It sucks.” I looked at the TV hanging on the wall. It was showing a variety program about a fat man visiting various ramen shops. He had to visit a certain number of shops all in one day. He had to run between each train station and the shop. He was sweating a lot. At each ramen shop, he would spin a wheel to determine which side dish he had to eat. When he finally sat down with the ramen, he would slurp it down loudly. He would look into the camera and exclaim, “Meccha umai!!” (Very delicious!!)

I ate my ice cream. It dripped onto my robe.

Five days later, I was in Vancouver, Canada. I was in the backseat of my parents’ car. My parents were driving me home from the airport. In the span of twenty minutes, Japan had transformed from my entire existence into but a memory. Everyone had successfully disappeared. It was, finally, for one last time, the Day After Tomorrow. All that was uncertain and full of hope came crashing back into me. The world was exactly where I had left it.

My dad was telling me a story. He was telling me about how, two weeks ago, he was driving on this very highway, and had seen an eagle. The eagle was sitting in a tree. The eagle continued to sit in the tree. My dad drove past the eagle.

I breathed a large breath.

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