COOKING & ENTERTAINING WITH STYLE : Getting to Know You : Entertaining in the New L. A. / <i> Visiting with Joel and Margaret Chen, Yukuo and Akiko Takenaka, Agustin and Maria Garza and Jorge Santos </i>

Yukuo Takenaka’s first brush with the differences between Japanese and American social customs came in a physical-education class in Salt Lake City when he was 15 years old.

“We had a dancing class,” he says, shaking his head. “That really shook me. You have to remember, in Japan in those days, we didn’t even talk to girls and we certainly didn’t hold hands. I had never danced in my life. In fact, I had never touched a woman’s hand before. And in the United States, girls grow up very fast. It was a shocking experience to say the least.”

Takenaka recovered enough to become the first Japanese accountant at the prestigious accounting company of Peat-Marwick, where he worked for 22 years before leaving this past March to found his own investment-banking firm, Takenaka and Co. His new role often requires that he act as a Japanese firm’s man in America. He’s not uneasy about dancing any more, but he remains acutely aware of the differences between the way the two countries live and do business.

“The difference between when Japanese entertain and when Americans entertain is that when Japanese entertain for business, it is 100% business,” he says. “In American business entertaining, there is a lot of emphasis on family and friends. Americans try to become your personal friend before they become your business friend.

“In my home, I would only entertain relatives--cousins and nephews--or very close friends I have known for a long time. For business, we usually take our guests to restaurants or nightclubs, or sometimes to play golf.”

For this, there is a price to pay. Takenaka says that at one time his wife Akiko was typical of many Japanese in America in that she had a hard time making friends: “She lived a very lonely life, initially. Then, when our kids went to school, we moved to Palos Verdes. It was a very small school and they needed the parents to help. My wife’s language skills were not very good yet, so she worked in the school garden every day and got to know people through their children. But if we hadn’t had kids, I would have had a very lonesome wife.”

In Los Angeles, he usually takes visitors to Nobu Matsuhisa’s restaurant on La Cienega (“I admire him very, very much”), the expensive Sushi-Ko or the private zashiki rooms at Horikawa, good for business discussions.

“I usually prefer either sushi or what we call kappo ryori. In Japanese, that means small dishes,” says Takenaka. “It’s like a series of appetizers that usually feature the vegetables and fish of the season. Because I travel so much, I need to balance my diet and with that kind of menu, it is much easier to do.”

If the visitors don’t want Japanese food, Takenaka will probably take them to Lawry’s The Prime Rib: “There’s something that Japanese love about a big piece of meat.”

Some of his favorite restaurants, Takenaka keeps secret. “One of the problems with the Japanese is that they tend to do everything the same as everybody else,” he says. “If someone says this is good, everybody wants it. If I took people to my favorite restaurants, I wouldn’t be able to get in. I only take Americans or people from Japan who aren’t going to remain here.”