Did I mention that we went to Honoka? I think we went to Honoka. Did we? Certainly we took the train after. Or something that looks like a train. With all our friends. They love us, just sitting there giggling, speaking broken Japanese, maybe taking the odd picture. Maybe, hell. It’s OK, we’re foreign. Well, […]
Otemachi
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Komeraku, Otemachi (ひとくち茶漬け 八十八楽 こめらく)
The green-ness here is quite striking, isn’t it? As are the low ceilings. These old-fashioned buildings in central Tokyo were not built with claustrophobics in mind. Or people were smaller back then. My favorite example of that style was the old JA building, which was dark and dirty and half-shuttered as well as claustrophobic. Now […]
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San Mari Tearoom, Otemachi
A laaate lunch put me in mind of these places in the basement of the building across the street that stay open all hours. They’re ‘tea rooms’, or kissa, as you like, and this looked like the most likely contender – at least on the smokey atmosphere dimension. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t smoke […]
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Bangkok Stand, Otemachi
Have you been to one of these places? I think they were emboldened by the success of Tinun in branching across Tokyo, and decided they would do their own thing. The difference is that they do it in convenient locations, like the basements of two buildings near my office. They’re serious about the ‘stand’ thing. […]
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Utage, Otemachi (宴)
Just got back from a business lunch at this place. I correctly diagnosed from the web site that it was not the sort of place I’d ever use my own funds to visit, but it was a bit better in practice than I expected. As a business lunch, you can’t expect to see any pictures. […]
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Rose and Crown, Otemachi
Somehow I had planned my schedule weeks ago so as to have lunch with Zoner on this, my first day back at work. To compound the insult of being back in the office, he suggested walking or to Yaesu and trying RosandCrown and Goldmansachs Are Dead, or something to that effect. These guys run a […]
- Otemachi
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Lunch Trucks, Otemachi
Yet another place to tick off the list, and in this case it’s really a ‘place’, not a restaurant by another name. In front of the Sankei building, which is just diagonal to my office, there’s a series of lunch trucks parked every day along with tables for eating their takeout. The number varies by […]
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Taihei, Otemachi
In the basement of the new(ish) JA building, this is a tolerable Thai place that I think opened recently – not in the initial batch of places that opened at the same time as the building, at any rate. They have nice lunch sets spanning the usual Thai lunch choices. Red and green curry for […]
Kikkon, Otemachi (吉っ今)
Somehow I got it into my head that this place was good…as soon as we got out of the elevator (Sankei Building, 6th floor, watch out because you need to take the one labeled ‘goes to 6th floor’) and saw the crowd barrier dividing the big entry hall and the poster-sized menu from which you […]
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Mimikyu Soba, Otemachi (美美久)
This is a real, old-fashioned salaryman soba lunch hangout…which makes it quite sensible that I went there with my company’s CEO (and that’s pretty funny isn’t it? The American equivalent would be ‘just grabbing a burger with Lloyd Blankfein’.) If you go, expect to be elbow-to-elbow at formica-topped tables with middle-aged and older guys in […]