On this trip too, my friends living in Tokyo threw a small home party for me. It was not exactly a grand gourmet gathering, but it was fun seeing their faces after such a long time. I brought a few things myself as well.

Today’s drinks

A new version of Mikkeller’s I Hardcore You had come out, so I grabbed it right away. The label on the bottle has changed, but the taste is the same as ever. It is my favorite beer in the whole world, and sadly there is no way to get it in Korea. FAKE LAGER is the beer BrewDog made with the ambitious goal of brewing a proper lager, but I could not tell what made it better than Brooklyn Lager. I guess that just shows how many breweries make good lagers. The Mikkeller beer was tasty too, with a fresh aroma, but what really blew me away this time was BrewDog’s RIP TIDE. It is a stout at 8% ABV, and if it were not for the foam you could mistake it for dark chocolate or espresso, it is that thick and rich. Once again I was thrilled to discover such a great beer.

Beers

These are the beers another friend brought, a lineup of tasty beers you can find at the supermarket. They are imported into Korea too, so I am sure you all know them. The Samuel Adams lager in particular is really good.

Rosé wine

A rosé wine my friend picked up on the way back from a trip to Portugal, nice for easy drinking. It is a wine you can only get locally, so there is not much I can say about it.

A cake from Sembikiya

Sembikiya’s fruit tart is so beautiful it looks like the fruit has been elevated to an art form. It tasted good too, but if there is one problem, it is that dividing the fruit fairly is hard. I think it would have been better shared between two or three people.

Japanese sparkling

Interesting new sakes keep coming out in Japan these days. Maybe the techniques have improved, because the taste was not bad at all.

I drank quite a lot that day, so there are no more records. We also had the gâteau au chocolat from Ken’s Cafe, and it tasted exactly like my ideal gâteau au chocolat. Left at room temperature, the chocolate melts to the point of running, and it disappears in your mouth like melting snow. It finally feels like it has become a truly first-class gâteau au chocolat.

Lately I have become quite weak with beer. I can drink as much hard liquor as I want and be fine, but beer alone makes my head go fuzzy. Yet when I come to Japan there are so many good beers that there is no way to avoid drinking them. I want to drink I Hardcore You again, but I have no idea when I will get to. I looked into ordering it directly from the UK, but it comes to 20,000 won a bottle, so I figured I would rather save that money and make one more trip to Japan. Plane tickets are cheap too.

한국어로 읽기日本語で読む