Cradling a brown paper bag filled with sake bottles in her arms, a dismayed Lauren Graham stopped short in front of Yakitori Tora, a Japanese restaurant in SoHo. The windows were dark, the tables were empty and the chairs nowhere to be seen.

A meal at the restaurant was supposed to be the final stop of the night’s trifecta: first, a trip to Sakaya, a sake store on East Ninth Street; then, grocery shopping at Sunrise Mart in the East Village; and finally, meat skewers at Yakitori Tora.

Ms. Graham, 49, most famous for her TV role as Lorelai Gilmore in “Gilmore Girls,” had planned the entire evening. Her love of “anything” Japanese, while it may come as a surprise to fans, is anything but arbitrary. Ms. Graham’s grandparents were sent to Japan as missionaries after World War II, and her mother, who died in 2005, spoke fluent Japanese and worked as a buyer for a department store in Japan. And Ms. Graham, who was born in Honolulu, lived in Japan briefly as a baby.

Unfortunately, her plans to share the culture she loves were thwarted on this October evening. Even the coolest mom on television, who returns Friday with four 90-minute episodes on Netflix, can do little when confronted with a locked door.