Food and Drink

Many of Tokyo’s little old bars are a complete mystery from the outside. One can hope that inside it’s what you are looking for, but until the door is slid open, it’s simply impossible to say.

Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t, but when it’s got bags of character like this place, and has been run by same lovely old woman for the last 43 years, you know you are on to a winner.

The interiors of more than a few Tokyo bars are truly timeless, and in this particular case, the blurring of the decades was nicely aided by some wonderfully old school headwear.

Rainy season is rubbish. It rains a lot, obviously, and the humidity very noticeably starts to increase. Then even when it’s over things aren’t any better, as the scorching heat of summer kicks in and the stickiness gets truly uncomfortable.

But moaning aside, one definite benefit of all that rain is reflections. Particularly so considering Tokyo’s love of bright lights. An effect that can, at a push, make the mundane sight of an old man heading home after drinks appear almost poignant.

On a similar-ish theme, the other day I achieved a goal of sorts by getting a series of photographs in The Guardian — a newspaper I’ve been reading daily my entire adult life. The topic is Tokyo’s old, but still working bar and restaurant owners, craftsmen, shopkeepers etc, so if you’d like to see it, the gallery can be viewed here.

Even after retreating to one of Tokyo’s old and quiet little corners, there was still no escape from Trump’s trip to the capital. But whereas avoiding him was impossible.

Ignoring him clearly wasn’t.

The setting, as well as the animated faces of the older fellas were interesting, but in the end, it was the amused look of the young woman in the corner that really made the moment for me.

The bar below has been in operation for 39 years, and its owner, perhaps unusually for such a back to basics little establishment, is a fully trained French chef. Leaving his native Kyushu at 14, he worked in Tokyo and Sapporo, before packing it all in and opening his own place.

And what a place it is.

We first drank there almost 5 years ago to the day. Half a decade that has seen several substantial changes. The Master-san is now 83-years-old, plus fairly recent health issues forced him to close for several months. And yet at the same time, nothing has really changed at all. The bar still looks and feels exactly the same, and the main man himself continues to love what he does, as well as being as wonderfully lovely as ever.