Saturday lunch with the kids. More precisely, ‘Saturday lunch where we take turns desperately trying to entertain the kids while our spouse eats ramen’. As usual I was naive. I thought if you got to a 97+-rated shop by 11:30, you’d be kinda safe. What did I think ‘safe’ meant? Because they don’t have a […]
Akihabara
McDonald’s, Akihabara
I’ve been accused before of over-posting, and commenting on a McDonald’s isn’t going to sway any opinions to the contrary. But to the contrary, you may well need to know about this. Because you can go to McDonald’s across from Yodobashi Camera in Akiba, buy a soda, go upstairs, and look out the window at […]
Mazeru ramen, Akihabara (麺処 マゼル)
Mazeru? Yes, yes I will. With an offer like that, how could you not get excited? It means ‘stir’, and the implication of the name and the sign is that you’re going to get maze-soba (pronounced mah-zay), a lot like the junk from Junk Garage, for example. And that is a gooood thing. I’m fond […]
Cafe Rosemary, (カフェ ローズマリー)
Oh hell, it’s the fourth of July. Well, happy fourth to everyone who’s in a place where they give a damn. Here, it’s a normal day at the office, albeit one on which I could spend almost 75 minutes at lunch. Then again, I did ride to Akiba, buy a disk drive, find this place, […]
Ganko ramen, Akihabara (宗家一条流がんこラーメン八代目 秋葉)
As usual, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Tokyo this month. Every morning I leave home a little early so that I’ll have time to cruise on the bike through Tsukiji, Ginza or other neighborhoods, maybe pick up a cold Roots Aroma Revolut (after 7 years, I remain a sucker for Engrish product names)… […]
Shun-poo ramen, Akihabara (麺 旬風)
Another day, another ramen. I was braving the heat again to ride about on my bike, this time up by Akiba. On the east side of the highway, in that weird strip of tall buildings under and next to the tracks, I popped out of a random alley and faced this happy site. I try […]
Margaux tonkatsu, Akihabara (丸五)
Ominous, the sky. I was heading up to Akihabara to buy a radioactive giant saber-toothed turtle action figure (Americans make the wierdest requests of people coming home on vacation) and figured I’d combine it with lunch. I also combined it with a picture of the ‘Loving Hut’ truck, which is just like that Natural Hand place, only it’s […]
Aarti, Akihabara (アールティ,神田佐久間河岸)
Cast a wide net, that’s what I always say. Actually I never say that, but it was well worth walking the 20+ minutes up north to get to this place (east of Akihabara). I snapped a quick picture when I realized that the little red and yellow blob on the crappy skinny building wedged in […]
Matsukaze ramen, Akihabara (松風)
When I first came to Japan and started at my new company, the most surprising thing was this: no laptop. After almost 10 years in consulting-related jobs, not having a laptop from work was like losing an arm. A not very useful, kinda heavy arm that you had to carry around all the time. It […]
Bengal, Akihabara
Bengal is a place I’ve seen many, many times but never tried. Now that I’ve tried it, I’m happy to say “I wasn’t missing anything, and neither are you!” As with some other places I’ve been with recently, I’m prepared to think I’m missing the point – they’ve been doing this since roughly 1970, so someone […]