Rue Sainte-Anne
They call it “Little Tokyo,” though that might be a little bit of a stretch. While Rue Sainte-Anne, a street that passes through the 1st and 2nd arrondissements, is lined with Japanese and Korean ("japonais” and “coréen”) restaurants, grocers, and bakeries, it still looks distinctly Parisian, with its Haussmann-style buildings and wet, cigarette-littered sidewalks. The street itself is old – it was named “Saint-Anne” over 100 years before the U.S.A. even became a country – but it didn’t become a “Little Tokyo” until relatively recently. The unlikely location, just blocks away from the Louvre and other major tourist attractions, is part of what makes this enclave of authentic eateries so remarkable. It’s also one of the few places in this part of Paris where you can get a good meal for 10 euros.
Last Thursday, while recovering from a cold, I decided to go into Paris for a bowl of ramen. I take the RER A (one of 5 commuter trains that run through Paris and its suburbs) to Auber, and then take metro line 7 just one stop to Pyramides. It is raining, as it usually is in Paris. It’s eleven o’clock, a perfectly reasonable lunch time in my opinion, but most of the restaurants aren’t open yet. I wander around for a while, watching vendors unload crates of food from unmarked white vans. I pass a group of ten men and women wearing what look like lab coats, standing under an awning, smoking and laughing.
I eventually duck into Sapporo, a brightly-lit ramen joint. I sit at the bar and hold my head over the steamy bowl, relishing the freedom to slurp the noodles. (My French host parents occasionally serve Asian noodle dishes for dinner, but they don’t use chopsticks and scream at their children if they slurp their noodles.) A stereotypically thin and chic French woman sitting next to me is eyeing my iced matcha and asks me what it is. I understand and am able to reply (not always the case!), and she then orders the same.
Buoyed by the tiny success of this interaction, I walk down the street to a Japanese grocery store to buy tofu – something that’s hard to find at normal grocery stores here. I browse through the tightly-packed aisles of colorful products with perplexing packaging while American classic rock plays over the speakers. While John Fogerty sings “Fortunate Son,” I struggle to determine whether there is one line or three for the three cash registers. Parisians are notoriously bad at forming and waiting in lines – they really don’t understand the concept – so I just stand around near everyone else and eventually it is somehow my turn.
Back into the rain – I scurry to the metro and take it to get back on the RER. I feel like I spend more time on this train than anywhere else. I board, climb to the upper level, and take a seat next to the only other woman in the car. A lanky young guy across from me is wearing a black bucket hat covered in green shamrocks. He gets off and is replaced by another who is rolling his own cigarettes in his lap. I’m impressed by his ability to do this without a work surface. As we get out into the suburbs, the train rises up from underground, passing over the Seine – which here looks so nondescript that it could be the Ohio River – through abandoned fields and huge, grimy apartment complexes, out into the grey-brown suburban sprawl.
