Setting out for a day of adventuring in the hinterlands, I decided to stop off in Nakano for a rousing spot of…well, lunch. Nakano seems like a place that would be famous for ramen, but I don’t think it is. Certainly there were not that many places looking likely – a couple in the covered […]
Month: September 2010
- izakaya
- ...
Luck! Zen, Ningyocho (なごみ屋楽膳)
You and I (and You is my colleague, not you) tried to go to this place tonight that I spotted while jogging after the typhoon. Looked like an abandoned building where people had set up a squatter business grilling clams and squid, with self-service drinks. They have a web site. And they were fully booked. […]
- Other treats
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Murata, Iwamotocho (むらた)
Another of those ‘fill in the map’ days. However, it seems the map has stopped working now that there are over 1,000 points on it…that could take some work. That kind of work is much less fun than actually going to restaurants… Anyhoo, here’s the shady doorway or Murata, offering respite from scorching sun (one […]
- bar
- ...
Country House, Akasaka
After repeated success and enjoyment at Rocky Top, and really quite serious letdown at Nashville, I’ve been gun-shy about trying more country music live venues in Tokyo. Part of the problem is that, in so many ways, my economic mentality is mired in the 90’s (or so). I think a concert ticket should cost about […]
- bar
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Antwerp Port, Akasaka
I’ve ruminated at length before on chain shops in Japan; in summary, if it’s a chain, but it’s a small chain, and it’s consistently good, is there a problem? Only mental, I think, because we feel disappointed that there’s no discovery element, and certainly no chef ‘cooking just for me’. The Antwerp chain has 6 […]
- Ginza
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Dedesuke, Ginza (でですけ)
Typhoon? Nuts to that. Lunch time. I was so keen to do something different that I took the train to Ginza. Where it was raining. Hard. Dedesuke is not necessarily a promising place – if you look over the door, you’ll see the first word is hormone…and you should know that that word means nothing […]
- izakaya
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Koju, Kanda (かんだ光寿 )
We all have our biases, and in this case the thing that kept me from going to Koju much sooner was the web site. It’s spectacularly uninformative, and even confusing – the main picture shows a man in a firesuit, leaning against the front of a racecar. It does not contain the shop’s address. Nor […]
- Kanda
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Kotatsu ramen, Kanda (虎龍)
You could be forgiven for thinking that the name here had something to do with the blanket-covered tables that people are so delighted to slip their legs under in the winter. If you thought of the noodles as a table, and covered it with a warm, meaty blanket of mixed pork cuts, then imagined the […]
- Kanda
- ...
Hamayoshi, Kanda (浜よし)
I have to say this at the beginning, just because I think it’s so funny – Hama-yoooooooosh! I know it’s not funny to anyone else, but I’ve gotten really into saying “yosh” in all manner of Japanese situations (long ‘o’ sound). It’s a sort of casual exhortation like “Here we go!” or “Let’s do this […]
- Other treats
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Shoryu gyoza / ramen, Ueno (昇龍)
This place is stuck in my mind as being famous. Is it? Anyone else ever heard of it? I would guess I visited right after I came to live in Japan, or maybe even during one of the trips that preceded that. It was probably in a magazine that month, and that’s how we got […]