Midnight Diner

On evenings when the rest of the family has had enough TV but I haven't (sometimes I am nigh unto insatiable) I have watched a few episodes of Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories. It is a somewhat corny series, but there is a very real, tactile, dare I say it -- haptic -- foreigness to it that is so rare and so enticing in a world in which globalized modernity and post-modernity seems to have effaced all too much difference -- but also as we sense that the age of casual global citizenship may be fading as borders harden. I totally want to go there, eat the food, drink the beer, and have little adventures with these Japanese nerds and archetypes.