Food and Drink

It’s always impossible to know what lies beyond before you slide open the door of a little old Tokyo bar, but when they look as intriguing as this on the outside, you can be pretty sure things will be even more interesting on the inside.

And this place proved that point perfectly, as it turned out to be a truly wonderful spot to drink, think and be looked after by the lovely owners.

It’s still possible to see food delivered traditionally by bicycle in Tokyo, but this wonderfully quaint practice is rapidly being overtaken by newer, rather less precarious forms of bike-based transportation.

With Tokyo hosting the Olympics next summer, the city’s rapid pace of change seems to be even more pronounced, and yet for all its transformations, some things, somehow, remain more or less the same.

A moment of calm, as well as a chance to cool down, before the cooking and general conviviality commences.

It may well be September, but summer in Tokyo shows no sign of letting up, with temperatures still getting above 35 degrees. Heat that, when combined with the similarly unrelenting humidity, is a hard climate to contend with at the best of times. Then on top of that, throw in a long night fuelled by a gargantuan amount of booze, and even the simple pretence of managing is clearly surpassed by the far more pressing desire to simply pass out.

A traditional little drinking alleyway where the simple passage of time has taken its toll — both on the location, and the people who spend their lives there.