Food and Drink

There is certainly no shortage of simple, rough and ready bars in Tokyo. Places where there’s no fuss or falseness whatsoever. Just unpretentious sustenance and surroundings.

Thankfully one doesn’t have to go far to find them either. In fact they can even be found on unlit, shuttered-up streets in the suburbs. Beacons of sorts in the dreary darkness.

This one was even more special too, as during its 23 year existence — it had been a tonkatsu restaurant before its current form — we were the very first western foreigners to walk through the door. A door that led, like so many others, into a tiny, antiquated establishment.

Where the dirty and dated surroundings only add to the experience.

Creating an ambience that’s just as nourishing as the wonderfully no-frills food and drink.

No airs and graces. No faffing about. Just no nonsense, back to basics, beer and food.

The likes of coffee shops and restaurants offer some relief on cold Tokyo days. But hot noodles. Bought cheaply. And wolfed down often frighteningly quickly. Really take some beating.

That drunken, falsely confident feeling of, ‘one more can’t do any harm, I’ll be fine’, generally results in a sore head, or more often than not, horrors far worse. Times when the comfort of a bed and the shaky embrace of feeling sorry for oneself slowly but surely win out the day. But how much those horrors must be magnified when waking up. In daylight. Outside a grotty convenience store. Really doesn’t bear thinking about.

Tokyo may lack some things, but not drinking establishments — not by any stretch of the imagination. And yet despite many being lavish and elaborately decorated affairs, it’s almost impossible to resist the dirty little places down dark alleyways that offer wonderful, character-filled glimpses of the past. Cramped escapes that happily exist in the modern world, but very rarely give the changing times more than a cursory glance.