Kawamura soba, Yanaka (川むら)

You wouldn’t believe what you can get done in a lunch hour if you work in Otemachi. Granted, no one’s checking my arrival times, so it’s OK to run over a few minutes when you need to get something done like today’s shopping trip. But if I told you I went to Tokyo station, took the train to Nippori, did my shopping, ate soba, and came back, would you believe me? Would you care? Just let that one go.

Anyhoo, it’s been a long, cold winter, but things are all set to heat up now. And the temperature was close to 70 today also. Just up the hill from the station are a few shops – a great rice cracker place, a ‘soy boil’ specialist (佃煮), flower shop, liquor store, sushi, Indian restaurant (?) and soba shop. You already know which one this is. I see that it gets a lot of reviews, and some puzzlingly high ones, on Tabelog. Well, the noodles were good.

Nothing much to mention inside, except that they had about 15 varieties of jizake (though how fresh can it be when they have one bottle of each sitting in a fridge? No turnover.) and, excitingly, a special glass fridge with a small keg of Kirakuchou. This is only the second time I’ve seen kegged fresh sake, and the zeroth time I’ve tried it. I debated begging for a taste, but settled on the dignified and non-alcoholic course.

But with my newfound resolve to eat more food, I got this tempura-cold noodle set (tenzaru to his friends). Interestingly, Tabelog nails it – the cost performance is poor here. I was starving when I ordered this, and merely ravenous after finishing. It was a very good shrimp though, bursting with sweet shrimpy flavor and almost etherally tasting of the sea and sand, … am I making it clear why I’ve stopped writing this way? Every damn shrimp you eat tastes like a damn shrimp, and there’s no need to use stock words to say that it tasted like a damn shrimp. Sheesh.