Eating Out in Tokyo with Jon was a project I executed between 2008 and 2011 with generous sponsorship from Lehman Brothers and then from Nomura Holdings. I started it as a resource for people like me who worked in Roppongi and wanted to go out to lunch. I quickly got way too into it, and then just stayed in out of stubbornness. How else can you explain eating lunch at a different restaurant every workday in 2009, or trying an average of 1.2 new restaurants per day, every day, for 3 years? How about Kanda, generally viewed as a quiet and office-y neighborhood, where I’ve been to 167 restaurants?
What you’ve got here is about 1,400+ posts on restaurants in Japan, mostly in the aforementioned Tokyo, and then a smattering of other places where I ate on business trips or on vacation. These days I only update it when I’m back in Tokyo on vacation or when I have barbecue while on a business trip. Eating Out in Chicago is as interesting as watching a lump of poop dry compared to eating out in Tokyo.
For people who have stumbled on the site and don’t want to wade through 1,300+ posts, can I suggest that you start with the summary pages? They include izakayas, Japanese junk food (with a dozen ramen recommendations), and the other titles just under the header. Depending on when you’re reading this, links, addresses, phone numbers, names, chefs, genres, and qualities may have changed dramatically. If you have questions, other excellent sources of information are here or here.
Don’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you about the ‘Tokyo scene’. It’s too big for that. Every train station defines a neighborhood, and every neighborhood is its own scene. Every genre is its own scene. Every group of college friends, spread out across the metropolis but getting together once in a while, is their own scene. My scene these days is about looking for good food that’s served with good sake, but when I started this my scene was French food. BE YOUR OWN SCENE. BE THE SCENE. YOU ARE THE SCENE.
Here are some pictures of me sitting casually in panorama.
I tell a lie, I’m walking in one and absent from another. I like to be specific.