I moved from New York to Northern California mere six months after I returned from a year in Japan followed by a month or two in Hawaii. My high school friend had gotten a fellowship to UC Berkeley, and wanted to move out of the grad dorm where even in the late 70s left-wing antisemitism was rampant. She needed a roommate for an apartment on nearby Oakland, and what the heck -- I had nothing better to do. So I packed a few things and flew off, with the intention of staying at most six months.

Perhaps a harbinger or warning of years to come, the night I arrived the Bay Area had an earthquake.

Our apartment was on Alcatraz Avenue, and true to its name, if we looked down the sloping street a few miles to the bay, Alcatraz Island was hazily visible. The view from my bedroom was a gas station on Telegraph Avenue, and down the street was a kiosk where we sometimes got pineapple milkshakes. The rent for the two-bedroom apartment was $197.00, and no, I did not miss a decimal there.

I was initially way too optimistic about finding work. I thought that having freshly returned with a good handling of the Japanese language I'd surely find something. During my stay in Hawaii I heard over and over again how I should stay there because the language was a sure-fire way to open doors there thanks to all the Japanese tourists.

San Francisco was different: no matter how many phone calls I made, how many wanted ads I answered, how many miles of pavement I pounded, the kind of job I had entertained was not to be had.

So I finally landed employment as a waitress in a Japanese restaurant in Berkeley, for an alcoholic chef in serious need of an anger management program. The restaurant was right downstairs from the “Federation Trading Post,” a local store that featured Star Trek mementos at a time when trekkiness was not yet a fandom thing. Once William Shatner came and the line curled around past our door.

The other restaurant employees were nice, and many of the customers so frequent that it almost felt like "Cheers." One very kind visiting professor from Japan seemed to eat all his meals there and gave me a tiny Sony TV when he left. A visiting student from Japan had a crush on me and after leaving sent me a blurry a photo of the two of us and what might count as a love letter ("I really like you. You are really cute.") A classmate from high school in New York came in one day, as did another from elementary school who recognized me despite the passage of 12 years since fifth grade.

After-work meals at the restaurant when all the staff ate together ("itadakimasu!") were often a treat.

Still, I got tired of the sore feet, the unsteady income, and mostly the unpredictability of the chef who in the mornings could be seething, casting baleful looks around and he hammered a Japanese cleaver at his food prep. Other times he might be gleeful as he recounted how he stalked ex-dates by drunkenly driving his Porsche onto their lawns.

I moved on to a wholesale Chinese travel agency in San Francisco owned by a young filthy-rich Lothario from Hong Kong where I was one of the Japanese speaking staff, and had fun learning Cantonese expressions from my co-workers. In fact, I  learned enough to be able to tell a non-English speaker who called during lunchtime while I was alone, "Um, Chinese people are not here!" by stringing together the few words I did know. (She laughed good-naturedly and said something which, judging from her tone, I took to probably mean, "Heheh, I got it, I'll call back."

Dead end jobs, both, but on-the-job language practice, and so much good food.

So the next step was graduate school.