Ridgeline subscribers —

Hello from Denny’s. Happy new year. You can tell it’s January first, because I’m at Denny’s. I woke up and made a nice coffee and did some accounting (as one does) and went to my local shrine in Tokyo and bowbowclapclapbow’d and then I was off! Tramping across a city bathed in that classic January first crystalline sunlight. I can’t remember the last time it wasn’t like this one January first. When it wasn’t pure blue up above and the city itself splashed by a golden hour that seems to last all afternoon.

I walked twelve klicks across the city, down past the palace, around the moat, into a ghostly Marunouchi and beyond. Throngs of citizens lined up in freakishly long lines for random shrines. Groups of confused tourists walked with their eyes glued to their phones, trying to find somewhere that was open. My destination, as always, was Denny’s.

Around me, they eat, the Japanese families of this Denny’s general locale. It’s 3 p.m. and they’re all sick of being inside their homes, legs shoved under kotatsu, so to Denny’s they go. No seat is unoccupied. Big ‘ole omu-rices are being inhaled by elderly and child alike. Club sandwiches. The drink bar has a line. Into their gullets dogshit coffee flows (into my gullet, too). We love the dogshit coffee of Denny’s on January first. It’s a sign that we made it, we’re alive. Another revolution survived. More and more impressive, the survival. Celebrated with family-restaurant food, imported from America fifty-one years ago, the first Denny’s in Akasaka (now long gone). The menu shoved through the lens of Japan.

Today, we order on the world’s worst tablets. Another small loss of humanity amongst the many losses we continue to endure. Small gifts of human connection replaced by sub-par interfaces connected to garbage-heap backends — oh! my French toast has arrived. Two small pieces. Yum. Nothing to break up a complaint against the flow of badly deployed technology, yet another idiotic screen in our life, like bread soaked in eggs, fried up, and slathered with syrup. I’ll be back in one minute. Please hold …

… OK, back. Good stuff. A perfect dogshit coffee companion. God, it’s so nice, so nice to have Denny’s on January first. Little do the tourists know if you want to see “real Japan” it’s here, lurking in Denny’s. (Please don’t tell them.) Not even lurking, just being. Families being families. Little kids slightly bored out of their minds, forced to leave video games and TikTok behind for an hour as they eat mentaiko pasta. As their chubby little hands put forkfuls of twirled spaghetti into their chubby little faces. Dads work toothpicks. Some solo folks come with books and sit at the solo-folks island (I protested and got a seat with a view).

There’s a three-person group next to me talking about me now. I’m the only obviously-non-Japanese person in here. But I’ve lived in Japan longer than a bunch of the people in this restaurant have been alive. A strange tension. Integration, becoming or not becoming part of the greater whole. What constitutes full participation? Who makes or doesn’t make the cut? Questions growing more and more important for many countries in these coming years. I’ve thought often about making a t-shirt that says something insane like, “I’ve been paying taxes here since 2000.” And I can point at it when I hear people talking underneath their breath about me like I was some duck-billed platypus who happened to wander in — oh! What’s this, is this … French fries being delivered to my table? Yes, seems to be just that. Nothing to break up a rant about shifting social tensions, identity, and immigration like French fries. One must eat all the things with “French” in their name at Denny’s on January first. Please hold …

… OK — good work, team. These are the real deal, sad potatoes farmed on sad dirt, chopped thin, deep-fried in well-worn oil. Six granules of salt. One packet of ketchup, that’s all I’ve been given. A single packet. Here, if you don’t believe me:

I’ve had to modulate my ketchup expectations these last two-and-a-half decades. Still, when I’m back in the states, the land of infinite condiments, fear not: I go as crazy as I always have. You can take the man out of Ketchupland, but you can’t take the Ketchup out of the man.

The fries are dwindling. The dogshit coffee is coming to an end. The families are starting to pack it up. The kids are antsy. The omu-rices are finished. The plates are clean. Everyone is sated. Mariah Carey croons. We’re alive. Some of us are paying taxes. Some of us are paying a lot of taxes and nobody knows. Perhaps that elevates some of us to a more saintly status. Jesus or Allah is watching us undercover taxpayers, one must believe. These are concerns to be pondered in 2026. A year of incessant “barreling forward” as seems to be the wont of humanity. Six men will decide the fate of the world, and their combined emotional age is twelve. Mechahitler. So it goes. Hold on tight. Lots of good people are out there are holding the line, as unholdable may it be. A sane man is scheduled to run NYC. There are glints of un-insanity.

One day in the perhaps not-too-distant-future, food at Denny’s will be delivered to the tables by robots. But not now, not in 2025. We still have humans walking between tables, cleaning tables, handing over French toast and French fries. We take what we can, these tiny acts of connection. I smile at the server. He has no idea how much tax I’ve paid over the course of my life. There’s still a little light left in the day. Let’s walk.

C