How many times have I walked by Towers? A dozen, maybe more. Most people wouldn’t walk from the office to Ginza, but it’s only 20-30 minutes depending on what part of Ginza, and I always do it. Towers is right in the middle, and I thought it looked cool even before my friends mentioned this neat standing bar with fancy beers. There’s one problem with it, and that’s that it’s pretty much always full.
Not tonight, obviously, or you wouldn’t be reading this. I was intending to look for an oyaji-fuu standing bar in Shinbashi since I was meeting Victorious on the late side for Round 2 of our battle with Tokyo’s best sushi. But I walked by Towers (funny, that) and there were only these two people plus the bartender in his Samoan national team rugby jersey. Took a while for everyone to get warmed up (part of which was my fault – but I confess the bartender’s opening gambit of “So, do you like beer?” didn’t flow naturally into conversation. All I could think to say was “Popeye” and “Ushitora”, and he doesn’t need to hear that stuff.), but once we started talking it was fun. In particular, when I said where I lived, the woman fairly cooed “Ii tokoro janai?!?!?”, reinforcing yet again my reasons for picking my URL. They both live and work elsewhere, but the guy was knowledgable about the area, going so far as to discuss with me the relative merits of the 3 famous ramen shops in the Monnaka area. (He really dislikes Kissou, is neutral on Koukaibou, and favors Bigakuya, so I think we’re just dealing with the preferences of a guy who doesn’t like fatty ramen.)
Oh, the beer. One attraction for me is that they have a keg of real ale (Shiga Kogen Not So Mild; this guy went to the brewery) – or did, until the master hand-pumped the last pint for me. Outside that, there were several varieties of Baird on tap, Stone Vertical Epic 2009, Grissette, a few more, all in pints or halves. This photo’s blurry. It’s just filling space and reminding me what to say. And what I say is “Time for some crazy sushi.”
There’s a back bar of liquor too, if for some reason you went in here to not drink beer.
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