Tsubaki marries self-service and abandonment

It ain't easy being me. Not all the time, thankfully, but definitely in this restaurant called Tsubaki.

You see, my motive was simple: I felt like pigging out and I felt like Japanese. And preferably at a good price. It didn't even have to be authentic.

Since we happened to be in the Blok M area in South Jakarta, and I didn't feel like braving the frenzied "Little Tokyo" side streets, we thought we'd head to the generally neutral territory of Jl. Panglima Polim Raya. Which was where we found Tsubaki.

In the tradition of Hanamasa, it's mainly a self-service restaurant, with a full Yakiniku or Shabu Shabu course for Rp 22,000 (US$9.05) offered up as its highlight. In a self- consciously Japanese way, the billboard proudly announces a daily 20 percent discount between 3 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., and live music every Saturday and Sunday.

The words Yakiniku and Shabu Shabu are so brightly illuminated that they almost eclipse the name of the restaurant. It is almost as if the latter were of no consequence as long as the products on offer are made crystal clear to prospective diners.

The dining area is well-scrubbed and rigorously symmetrical, kind of like those super-efficient refectories selling hot canned food that you find in many European underground train stations.

No, I didn't have any problem with the interior. Neither did I have a problem with the food, which, although not great, is passable and certainly bountiful.

Imagine. You can take as much kimchi, salad, vegetables, chicken, squid, New Zealand beef and other mouth-watering delights as your heart desires, lump them on your personal griller, watch them brown so fast you won't be able to catch up, and you can keep on doing this for ages until your tummy bursts. You can even try to sneak up for seconds provided the flamboyant, omnipresent manager doesn't catch you and bill you twice.

Not to mention the accompaniments: Rice, miso soup, and a range of desserts which include fresh fruits and an assortment of curiously Thai-looking tapioca and coconut-based sweets. It doesn't matter that the last category I mentioned is hardly edible. There is even a set of free teeny-weeny sushi for good measure.

To some, this is absolute paradise. My partner, never too difficult to please, certainly thought so.

But here we come to where I didn't fit in. As my eyes darted around to appraise my surroundings, I realized I was the only one who hadn't signed up to sing karaoke. Jubilance was in the air. Everybody wanted to belt out a tune.

Sure enough, before long the jingling serenades were marred by all sorts of amateurish voices, each with a tale to tell.

I am something of a stickler for rules; when we eat, we eat, when we sing, we sing, but I find disagreeable any attempt to marry the two. A confounding paradox, I agree, since karaoke is without doubt one of the earliest and most popular forms of modern "eatertainment" to hit Asia.

But Tsubaki changed my mind -- not in the way that made me call the manager over and beg to sing Desi Ratnasari's Tenda Biru, but in the way that I began to understand just where the attraction lay, at least, for everybody else in that restaurant.

For this must be the pinnacle of all relaxation forms -- total abandonment. I saw how the two gorgons of gossip sitting opposite us were reduced to nothing more than two giggling girls trying to flow with the sweet, easy drone of steel guitar; how the prim Indonesian couple sitting next to us suddenly came alive as they tried to catch every word of a particularly capricious song; how the quiet lady trapped between two gentlemen at the far end table was instantly transformed into a budding Samantha Fox as she literally stomped to a jangly but seductive tune.

Whether these momentary transformations were an incitement to perversity or a defusing of it, I can't begin to tell. But no where have I felt more strongly that public impulses are as separate from social ones as the "floating world" is from the family home. For all its superficial dreich, Tsubaki promises release. From pent-up feelings, pressure, or plain tedium. It's an unlikely, yet oddly affecting world of indulgences, where even the shyest of people feel they can let go, trusting that everybody else in the room is there for the same reason.

Which makes Rp 65,000 for two almost too cheap to pay for such a privilege.

The polite Indonesian waiters, flawlessly playing the role of their Japanese counterparts, reminded me further that in such a world it is still us who are the gaijin (foreigner). In fact, it's like that everywhere, in thousands of Tsubakis worldwide. Such is the Japanese cultural impact on the larger world.

-- Epicurus