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, […]
yakitori
Muromachi Toriya, Nihonbashi (むろまち鳥や)
Woo hoo, this weird-looking chicken place does some great lunch specials. I almost want to go back to try their chicken ramen set. It looks like it should be yoshoku, or maybe a coffee shop. But inside is smoky as hell, with this guy manning a seemingly-unventilated grill and churning out an endless series of […]
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Torishu, Ryogoku (鳥守)
Every place has something to offer. Sometimes it’s just a life lesson, like “You shouldn’t go to places this bad,” but this wasn’t one of those sometimes. After another hour of cycling on our Kita Senju round-trip extravaganza, what Torishu had to offer was chicken. I’m joking to humorous effect, of course. It offered so […]
Nezameya, Kyoto (祢ざめ家)
Not everyone is fascinated by Fushimi Inari, Japan’s greatest shrine to the fox god. Some people, in fact, just get sleepy walking through all those gates. For propriety, you’re supposed to walk through them off-center (humble), and bow as well, but with thousands of gates, it ain’t happening. In fact, it never happens. I can […]
Kaiun Yokocho, Bakuroyokocho (開運横丁)
One thing about Ant – he does like his drinks. Even after finishing a full schedule at Okanaga’s place, he was eager to have another sake in a smaller group. Well, let’s not cut it off at ‘another’, he’d probably say. We started walking toward his hotel in Ningyocho (it’s freezing now, by the way. […]
Magoroku, Monzennakacho (深川 孫六)
This was very pleasing. Very very pleasing – brilliant yakitori plus game meat and jizake. How did I manage to go this long without trying it? Mainly it was my unreasonable anti-chicken bias. I’m recently converted, and now there are several more chicken places I should hit around town. You can keep your everything-but-the-cluck Birdland […]
Nagomi, Sendagi (和味)
It bears mention again – there are few neighborhoods better for an afternoon of exploration with someone than Nezu. It’s a place you don’t get tired of – you may have read about visits with Woodsy, McNoonan, and even by myself, twice. The long jog that finally tweaked my knees for the year was a couple […]
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Iseya, Kichijoji (いせや)
After spending a long, long day in Kichijoji last summer, I didn’t feel a tremendous need to go back – not that it’s not nice, but it’s pretty far away. So imagine my surprise when a trip to my new friend Beach’s pottery exhibition and lecture east of Ikebukuro turned into an invitation to yakitori […]
En, Monzennakacho (えん)
Clearly I’m not spending enough time walking the streets of Monnaka at night; there were several new places since the last time I got around, and that’s a rarity. This one looked really nice on Friday night when Mayu and I were binging on my old favorite places, so when we found ourselves with time […]
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Imaiya Honten, Shinjuku (今井屋本店、三丁目)
‘Honten’ means ‘main store’ or ‘original store’ – if a restaurant spawns a chain, they’ll refer to the first one as the honten. Maybe you could call it the ‘flagship’, but for some chains the original store is smaller and less glamorous, and they preserve it for historical reasons. The funny thing about Imaiya Honten is […]