Everyone’s got their yearly trip home, be it to Japan or America (and I’m reliably informed that some people hail from other colonies as well, like France). Today I met Blowin’ and his family, on their annual Japan pilgrimage, for lunch and a stroll around Ueno. Being the big food blogger and all, everyone wanted […]
Month: September 2010
- Other treats
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Boissier, Yaesu
Boissier, the Daimaru Tokyo cafe-style outlet of a French patissier, is a place that I noticed in passing once when taking the elevator up to the Daimaru restaurant floor. You wouldn’t think it, but there are cafes on most of the intermediate floors too. And they (this one at least) are enormous. I was expecting […]
- bar
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Deep Tin, Kachidoki
Cubic neighborhood bar with a dash of style, good selection of whisky and rum, Guiness and Heartland on tap, Chimay in bottles, interesting conversation, Big Bird. If you lived in one of the tremendous high-rise buildings near here, what else could you ask for? ‘Not a lot’ would be the appropriate answer, I think. In […]
- izakaya
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Shun, Kachidoki (いざか屋 旬)
Following the unfortunatosity that was Tsuruya, Big Bird and I ventured over to his ‘home quadrant’ of Kachidoki, where there’s one street with a few decent-looking places. The soba looks pretty good, and so did this place. It turned out OK. Any place with the audacity to call themselves ‘Season’ must have a bit of […]
- izakaya
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Tsuruya, Kachidoki (つるや)
There’s this great little place near the crossing in Kachidoki called Kanemasu. It’s just a standing bar, but they have some good food, especially these rolls of raw beef tenderly wrapped around the freshest briny sea urchin. This post is not about Kanemasu, it’s about the place around the corner that wasn’t full. Looks good […]
Daruma, Monzen Nakacho (だるま)
After getting hijacked into eating guts and drinking fake…not even beer, I guess I proved my street cred enough. Jerry sent a bottle of sake for me, and Hikuzo was nice enough to bring it up (from Tsukishima, which isn’t all that far really – perhaps 20 minutes on foot, or one stop). Being a […]
- Other treats
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Kujiraken ramen, Yaesu (くじら軒)
You’ve heard of this place Rokurinsha? Yeah, me too. I broke my promise to myself, shame shame, and tried to go again today. Sort of on a dare from You (who has actually been there once). At 3 PM, there were 27 people outside in line, and of course the inside was full. I went […]
- izakaya
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Omasa Komasa, Higashi Nakano (大政小政)
Really, apologies to all my sake-drinking friends. I don’t know what possessed me to go to Tachikawa today – and you didn’t miss anything out there, I promise. But on the way back I got to thinking…passing through Nishi Kokubunji always does that too me. I only went there twice. The first time was to […]
- izakaya
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Oumi, Tachikawa (青海)
The waitress from Zukunashi walked me down to this place, introduced me to the master, and then left. She has a business to run, after all. I was left with a two-sided sake menu and a bunch of snack options, in a rustic, deliberately old-style interior. It was kinda bustly, but I just sat and […]
- izakaya
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Zukunashi, Tachikawa (ずくなし)
After spending some time reading, trying to nap, and swatting ants in the big Showa Kinen Park, I started walking around when I thought shops would be opening. Sometimes my approach lets me down. Much as I love picking an unfamiliar area and just rolling around, freestyling, looking for good stuff, the whole woody-exterior, bottles-outside […]