Kushiya, Kiyosumi Shirakawa (KUSHIYA こぬた)

Thassit baby, kinjo-jiman. I don’t give a good goddam if it’s lower-class, it’s my home. We rolled around a lot on this balmy summer night, speculating on whether we would be caught in the rain.

Eventually we ended up back at the original intention, where they seemed to have been saving seats for us.

This is not the place, by the by, but I plumb forgot to take an exterior shot. Sorreez.

Inside it was crowded to just the right degree.

Now, I thought that since this place was called Kushiya, it would be a grilling specialist.

In fact, I thought it was called Kushikei, because I can’t really read. I was also wrong since it’s a fried things on sticks specialist. You can tell because you immediately get cabbage to go with the big metal pots of dipping sauce that sit at intervals along the counter.

Should you be concerned about the hygiene aspects, eh. Maybe lighten up a little? But you’ll be happy to know that all of the containers bear the legend ‘Second time attach is no thank you!’ If one was making any effort to be idiomatic, one would say ‘No double dipping!’

…which turns out to be sorta the motto of the shop. The staff had it on the back of their matching shirts, and the manager had it embroidered in red on his. They offered the shirts for sale in the bathroom, which turned out to be a cruel joke as supply was ‘chotto’ limited, which means ‘We got none’.

So we just ordered one tray after another of fried food, sometimes interspersed with the other things they offer

Like Hoppy Dark, which I have to say is a quite pleasant approximation of dark beer with very little hop bitterness. Which is funny when you think about the name.

More fried food. I’m sure no one’s forgotten that someone has a ring, but just in case.

I think there was a monster shrimp in here. Fortunately it was dead and fried.

After the first drink, I went all haywire. This is a Giant Grape Makkori, and my neighbor. He sensibly stuck with the black Hoppy.

Who needs a picture of a cucumber? You do. Didn’t know that, didja?

As I was saying, you could mix things up by not ordering fried sticks for a course and instead ordering…freestyle fried octopus.

Lamuna makkori. Oh god.

Or should I say ‘Woo hoo!’

Or should we just get some more fried food? Sure. They have these delightful little order slips where you check off how many of each variety you want. This is easy and fun for you, and I’m sure results in the restaurant selling a lot more food.

and, errrr, drinks. This is a shot of $2 shochu that you can get to freshen up your Hoppy – one bottle makes more than one mug of beverage, so you need to amp it up. Well, maybe not need, but I bet you’ve had that experience where you

Oh that one, where you  and then  and in the bathroom, they had they had like this picture of Bluce Lee and he was totally my idol when I was in high school.

I liked Bluce Lee because he would come down from his townhouse in heaven to kick the ass of the evil drug bears that waited in the corner of the bathroom in my dreams.

More fried food. More fried food. In our defense, this did take up 4 hours of Sunday night.

And finished up just fine. If you could see anything in this black blob, it would be two bikes happily parked side by side at Tomioka Hachiman.

Happy because their drunken idiot pilots didn’t wreck on the way home.
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