Friday night…errr, Wednesday night before the Thursday holiday…saw me walking around Kagurazaka, freezing my nuggets off, in search of sake. It’s been 2 weeks since I last brought you any sake exploration (the last was Ikebukuro’s Umibatake, which I still remember fondly) – a short low-consumption period to recharge. Feeling better now, thank you. Having […]
dinner
La Chasse, Roppongi
If I were the type of guy who gave his posts descriptive titles that made it harder to search for them later, I’d be calling this one “At the Sign of the Skull”. I don’t know how they got permission for this, but La Chasse has taken a perfectly normal building deep in Roppongi-3 (the […]
West Park Cafe, Kamiyacho
Before launching into a short and dull review of a place every foreigner in Tokyo probably knows, let me ask a simple question: Why did Josie Cotton never make it big? I was just listening to Convertible Music, which is a truly excellent confection of 80’s girl-rock. Sure, many people know songs like He Could […]
- Ginza
- ...
Vinorio, Ginza
Dinner with the Swans was supposed to be a fairly quick one, followed by live music. Instead it stretched out a bit and became the main event of the evening – partly our inability to order decisively, partly the speed of service. If you were doing nothing of an evening except dining, I would say […]
- izakaya
- ...
Umibatake, Ikebukuro (海畑)
Last year when I went to Sunny Spot in Ikebukuro, I left my camera on the bar. In fairness to myself, I was away from my seat for an extended period playing guitar, and during that time other people crowded around the spot where I had been sitting, which helped me forget the camera. But […]
- bistro
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Brasserie Bec, Yoyogi
There are a couple places I went years ago with my friend Naoko. They were all bistros – he was really good at picking bistros in outer suburbs – and after the visits I remained confused about where they were, ignorant as I was about geography in the year after I moved to Japan. In […]
- bar
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Fireking Cafe, Yoyogi
Arrrrr, the King of Fire. No idea what this has to do with fire and kings, but a comprehensive walk around Yoyogi Uehara has led me to believe that this is the coolest place going. I want to say this is like being in hip parts of Brooklyn, only I’ve never been there. Somehow I […]
- bar
- ...
Medusa, Ebisu
‘Sparkly’ was the order of the day, and that means ‘dining bar’ to me. This place practically jumped off the map, being almost new and also right behind Ebisu’s west exit. The atmosphere was all that, and oddly enough, the food was quite good. As with most big dining bars, there are quite a few […]
- bistro
- ...
Bonheur Place, Nishi Eifuku
Eiiiiiii- fuku? Once in a great while, we venture out to odd places. And in this case not even the bustling metropolopolis of Eifuku, but the western suburb thereof. I needed to meet The Recruiter, had no particular objection to travel, and suggested we might as well meet 2 minutes from his house. He suggested […]
- Other treats
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Gasshomura Santa, Ningyocho (合掌村 三太)
With a name like this, and a web site featuring lots of pictures of gassho-zukuri houses (think Shirakawa-go, the huge thatched-roof farmhouses) you’d expect some kind of Hida theme. You’d be wrong. But if you went expecting some kind of sake theme, you’d be right – 100 varieties. Only a few weeks into the year and […]