First time I’ve ever been in to the Mitsukoshi honten. The lobby is old fashioned and grand, like Takashimaya, or indeed like the grand old department stores in your city, if they still exist. One thing that’s different here is this impressive, incredible sculpture in the main hall. What does it all mean? I was thinking of going to one of the restaurants in here, but the restaurant floor has 3, and they’re all super high-end ‘chain’ places (Nadaman, Mantenboshi…don’t tell them I called them chains, OK?)
I left and ended up walking around that neighborhood across the street again. There’s a plethora of Japanese places of various description, but…beats me, I saw Indian and that was it. Mumbai Market, it would seem, is not related to Mumbai Bar.
And you wouldn’t confuse it from the inside, but it’s conceptually similar. Indian restaurants in Japan are too often either dingy or parodies; these places are setting a pleasant path down the middle with modern, light decorations. This wall of chalk is fun, especially the way they weave in some Hindi (I note with interest, by the way that Hindi has some characters and sounds that are only used in loanwords. Reminds me of katakana, except that there are actual additional sounds, not just adaptations of the existing ones.)
Without getting too long-winded or precious, the set was nice. It’s especially good that the butter chicken was very sweet; I saved the sauce until the end and called it dessert. It’s even nicer that someone downstairs has got this whole tandoor thing down pat, because the naan was perfect. It’s so rare to find one as light and fresh as they should be, and this was one of the good ones.
03-3272-0055
Back on the street, I got a quick picture of a funny phenomenon. It’s been so hot this year, with much of August monotonously hovering at 95 degrees during the day. When people are walking on the street, they don’t stand on the corners to wait for the lights to change – they stand in the shade, back from the corner. I started doing it this year. Lifesaver.
I've been a shadow stander for many a year now