It’s Officially Lunch Time In Tokyo

It’s officially lunch time in Tokyo.

The shopkeepers and restauranteers have all taken to the streets passing out flyers and coupons to their gyoza, and curry, and yakisoba, and Okinawan joints.

Take a flyer, have a lunch. You have exactly one hour. Starting from the time you thought about leaving your desk. Starting the exact moment you mentally put your appetite ahead of what is best for the company. You are operating on your own yen now, Pal-san. The company is not responsible for you during this one hour period.

So don’t take your time picking a place, go with your gut, and what you don’t remember having recently and what won’t make your fashionably crumpled blazer and jeans ensemble wreak for weeks. You’ve already wasted six minutes of your official lunch time.

You will have to chew faster, risking biting your tongue. The Company is sending out emails right now, looking for you. Business doesn’t take lunch. The reports or invoices or presentations are piling up on your desk. Your afternoon just got more complicated as you were slurping that miso ramen and taking your sweet time.

Look at those creative professionals, taking even sweeter time eating. Look at the tourists and those without a desk job. The whole day might as well be lunch for them. Look at those businessmen heading out of the speed ramen joints and into the afternoon adult entertainment shops with a head of steam. They’ve planned their lunchtime down to the minute. 15 minutes inhaling ramen, and 45 minutes of dancing girls.

Tokyo, you hybrid through Western eyes of Las Vegas cross bred with New York City. But don’t think about that for too long, because seriously, your job and boss are calling you and tweeting you and beeping you. You are dining on company time now, and this isn’t the kind of lunch you can expense. You’ve thought about nothing but your weekend plans and the Green Bay Packers. Both have no place in that annual report PowerPoint you are building.