Darkness envelopes me as I exit from the medicinally quiet stillness of the Oedo line’s City Hall terminus. This is a dead part of town at night, with no walkers and only the occasional filming session for a TV police procedural to break the womblike, tomblike silencium. Walking south along Shinjuku Central Park, the menacing […]
expensive
- Otemachi
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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. […]
- Other treats
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Sushi Hashiguchi, Akasaka (はしぐち)
Hmmm, here we go – Victorious came to Japan for his first ever visit, and this was the first time in over 10 years that we had spoken in person. What did he want to eat? Sushi, and Kobe, in that order (Americans love to call Japanese beef ‘Kobe’; I tried to delve into some […]
- Other treats
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Izuei, Ueno (鰻割烹 伊豆栄 本店)
Everyone’s got their yearly trip home, be it to Japan or America (and I’m reliably informed that some people hail from other colonies as well, like France). Today I met Blowin’ and his family, on their annual Japan pilgrimage, for lunch and a stroll around Ueno. Being the big food blogger and all, everyone wanted […]
- Other treats
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Boissier, Yaesu
Boissier, the Daimaru Tokyo cafe-style outlet of a French patissier, is a place that I noticed in passing once when taking the elevator up to the Daimaru restaurant floor. You wouldn’t think it, but there are cafes on most of the intermediate floors too. And they (this one at least) are enormous. I was expecting […]
- bar
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Deep Tin, Kachidoki
Cubic neighborhood bar with a dash of style, good selection of whisky and rum, Guiness and Heartland on tap, Chimay in bottles, interesting conversation, Big Bird. If you lived in one of the tremendous high-rise buildings near here, what else could you ask for? ‘Not a lot’ would be the appropriate answer, I think. In […]
- izakaya
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Omasa Komasa, Higashi Nakano (大政小政)
Really, apologies to all my sake-drinking friends. I don’t know what possessed me to go to Tachikawa today – and you didn’t miss anything out there, I promise. But on the way back I got to thinking…passing through Nishi Kokubunji always does that too me. I only went there twice. The first time was to […]
- bar
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Country House, Akasaka
After repeated success and enjoyment at Rocky Top, and really quite serious letdown at Nashville, I’ve been gun-shy about trying more country music live venues in Tokyo. Part of the problem is that, in so many ways, my economic mentality is mired in the 90’s (or so). I think a concert ticket should cost about […]
- izakaya
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Koju, Kanda (かんだ光寿 )
We all have our biases, and in this case the thing that kept me from going to Koju much sooner was the web site. It’s spectacularly uninformative, and even confusing – the main picture shows a man in a firesuit, leaning against the front of a racecar. It does not contain the shop’s address. Nor […]
Merveille, Nihonbashi
I left the office for lunch in a light and positive mood today. The weather has cooled by at least a few degrees, my June farewell lunch with Volleyball turned out to be only penultimate when found a few minutes in his busy schedule today…and since he was in Nihonbashi it occurred to me that I should […]