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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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Uohana, Enoshima (魚華)
Enoshima in August isn’t a preferred destination as far as I’m concerned – because it’s a preferred destination for so many people. Last time I went, there was a line hundreds of people long to get on the Enoden at Fujisawa (no lie – all the way from that station, across the plaza, and into […]
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Kudan, Gakugei Daigaku (件)
There’s a first for everything, and a slightly different personality to every neighborhood of Tokyo. This was my first time to visit Gakugei Daigaku, and I’d like to say its personality reflects a bit of its college roots. The few streets that I saw seemed cheaper and funkier than the average suburb, with a bit […]
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Ippou, Ebisu (一歩)
Boy do the hits keep on coming. Coming a little too fast, but we have to soldier on in the name of fun, sociability, and education. Ippou is in a small street on the east side of Ebisu; depending on your proclivities, you may know it as the street also containing Aotea Rangi, the New […]