Hey, you’re special to me, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Just by appearing in this uncredited picture (or reading this otherwise pedestrian blog entry), you’ve done a service to humanity. So don’t think you don’t count. Everyone is special. Hiroshou is pretty special too. Who even knew there was such a thing as […]
tempura
Maruzen tempura, Morishita (満る善 まるぜん)
Occasional visitors to Japan (hi Mom and Dad) will recognize this tiny, fading place as the one where we had lunch one day around 2005. Or not. It’s in the row of places across from the north entrance to Morishita station, along with Fuji. It’s a real get-there-before-they-die sort of place. So many of them […]
Tenman Tempura, Nihonbashi (天ぷら 天万)
You could convince me that this was a 4th-generation, 100+-year shop if you wanted. Wouldn’t be hard. It’s harder to understand how they can stay in business. The reason I ended up here is pretty simple – they’re right around the corner from absolute greatness, and I’ve been trying to eat tempura at that absolutely […]
Katayama, Kiyosumi Shirakawa (天ぷら 片山)
Today was the day of the big fish ‘n’ sake party, and I was out shopping. This is ont he way to the sake store, but the sake store was closed and I had already bought a bunch. My favorite rice store is right near the sake store – they always have at least half […]
Kanako Hannosuke, Nihonbashi (金子半の助)
Full disclosure: Our assistant somehow picked up free lunch tickets for this place that opened mid-November. You may have noticed that I like trying new places? I like free things too. A lot. So do other folks. When You and I assayed this place last week, we found a good 20 of them in line, some of them […]
Tsunahachi, Shinjuku
Here we have a whole flock of peafowl scratching about in the yard, looking for seeds and worms. Actually we don’t. Only two of them are peafowl. But all of them are about to enter this tempura restaurant that I’ve read about a couple times, Tsunahachi. Let me just get it out there – I’m […]
- bar
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Ushitora, Shimo Kitazawa (うしとら)
Heading out to Shimokita to meet Big Bird, I had all sorts of clever quips planned about how Ushitora is Tokyo’s second-best beer bar. Living near Popeye, I have a specific view of these things. But y’know, I’d actually have to say this is better. That means you’re reading about Tokyo’s best beer bar right […]
- Kanda
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Yatsudeya, Kanda (八ッ手屋)
There’s a lot of pleasure in visiting old places. The danger is that the theme-park attraction of them is often not met by anything resembling food, Alternatively, you can be forcibly reminded that the theme park is in your head, and the people who own and run these places aren’t doing it to be retro […]
- Jinbocho
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Hachimaki, Jinbocho (はちまき)
AaaaaaaI dunno, I just ended up wandering around a lot today. I tried to have an impromptu lunch with Peacock, who was busy (‘crunching’ is the term of art for ‘being busy’, incidentally. It has a sort of bones-and-flesh ring to it, don’t you think?). In his absence I still walked all the way up […]
- Ginza
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Hageten Tempura, Ginza (ハゲ天)
A bit of offbeat inspiration to work on some artsy projects made me run down to Ginza and the stationery-art megastore Itoya during lunch. While I would have been slightly under an hour getting back, I figured I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to eat in a different neighborhood and just went back a little […]