Sometimes people ask how I find all these places. Much like Eddy Merckx describing his approach in training to be the world’s best cyclist as ‘Ride lots,’ I spend an inordinate amount of time looking. Seek and ye shall find. I actually find the looking almost as enjoyable as the finding and eating, because it’s […]
mid-price
Kyushu Otokomichi, Ebisu (九州男道)
Chain izakayas. Do you think I hate them? I don’t. They fill a niche, and are fun, and the food is never bad even if it’s never surprising or exciting or different. Not liking chain izakayas is, I think, unnecessary snobbery. Despite the funny name (Kyushu Men’s Street?), you can sorta tell from the slickness […]
- izakaya
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Gingin, Omori (吟吟)
Boy, Woody and I have been talking about going to this place for months. Boy were we not impressed. That’s probably enough as a capsule review, and the lighting was bad so the pictures didn’t even come out so well. But I’ll soldier on. This picture’s pretty cool though, eh? Despite being quite a small […]
- bar
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Wall Street, Kayabacho
There isn’t much of interest to say about Wall Street except that…well, it’s in Kayabacho. When I worked in Roppongi it was my usual transfer point, so I used to transfer there all the time, and would sometimes just get off and walk home, looking for a place to eat along the way. Wall Street […]
- Kanda
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Danbo Ramen, Kanda ()
Even as far back as, ooooh, 2006, I had concluded that Hakata ramen was my favorite. This was based on trips to Ippudo, when I didn’t even know that Ippudo was Hakata ramen, and thought the spicy pickles on the table were just a snack while you waited. (You put them in the soup. Along […]
- bar
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Jazz Bar Gugan, Kanda
I wasn’t overjoyed about how I came to know Gugan – a colleague I was drinking with insisted that we had to hit another spot after I thought we were finished dinner and drinking, and his favorite was right around the corner. It’s straightforward and a nice enough place (which I don’t mean in a […]
Shoujou, Monzen Nakachou (猩猩)
Sometimes I have an existential crisis, a dark night of the soul where I wonder if there’s a point to all this looking for great restaurants – because lately it just seems so easy to find them, you know? There’s an expression in Japan if you like the taste of something, it ‘meets your tongue’. […]
Ryouma Ramen, Jimbocho (竜馬)
A monotonous statement, this one, but I passed this place on a scouting mission several weeks ago. I think it was actually the night that I finally went to Fukumen, which was a happy night that will stay in my memory for a long time. I was struck by the dissheveled small-ramen-shop aspect it presented, […]
- Other treats
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Chabuton, Minami Funabashi
Went to Ikea this weekend, which is way out in God’s country, following the curve of Tokyo Bay towards Chiba City. Turns out I went the wrong way when I went before, and with a little extra walking on the home end of the trip, the train only takes 30 minutes (not 60). When you […]
- bistro
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Strasbourg, Yokohama
Let’s say life hands you lemons. What do you do? I know, bitch about it! But in this case the lemons were relatively sweet (not like ‘just chewed a miracle fruit’ sweet, but not so bad) because they were just a trip to Yokohama. I dialed up my good friend Tabelog to see where we […]