Summer in Japan is festival season. I heard that the main event of the Shiba Matsuri, held every year in the shopping street near Shiba Park, is pro wrestling, so I went over at night to check it out. T…
Had a few drinks at a motsunabe specialist in Hamamatsucho. Maybe it is just the vibe of this neighborhood, but for 3,000 to 4,000 yen you can eat and drink pretty well here. Otoshi They brought out so…
I heard the Giga Dinosaur Exhibition was on in Makuhari, so I rushed over on the weekend. The sky over Makuhari Gorgeous. The entrance It’s not a huge show, but there were a lot of people…
Toho Sancho is a Chinese restaurant I have been going to regularly lately. It is my default when I just cannot be bothered with anything, so to speak.. The front entrance It is a very small place. &nbs…
The basement food hall at Isetan regularly runs collaborations with dessert shops from around the country. This time they were selling cakes from a place called Chant d’Oiseau in Kawaguchi, Saitama. I ha…
I came to Tokyo Midtown in Roppongi for the first time in a while, showing some visitors around. But wait, Le Pain Quotidien has moved into the spot where Tsutaya and Starbucks used to be? This bakery …
Tokyo Station gets so much traffic that it has quite a few interesting shops. Press Butter Sand Apparently it is a butter sandwich cookie specialty shop produced by BAKE, the Jiyugaoka brand famous for…
On the way back from L’atelier de Plaisir I made a quick stop at Komaba-Todaimae. There was one more place I wanted to see. An ultra town This is Soshigaya-Okura Station, said to be the birthplac…
I lived in Japan for a long time, but I never really had the chance to properly explore the Setagaya area on the west side of Tokyo. Setagaya itself is an enormous area, the transport is not great, and since i…
I’m always checking the Tabelog rankings, and a place had climbed to what was effectively the number one spot in the bakery category, so I planned a trip out to Setagaya around it. Plaisir is the place i…
Futako-Tamagawa has an ayu (sweetfish) ramen shop that has been famous for ages. Do sweetfish and ramen really go together, though? Come to think of it, the manga Ramen Hakkenden (published in Korea as Ramen C…
When work gets busy I have no time to go out to eat, so I just grab something from a convenience store. Here are the items that turned out to be pretty good. Morinaga Pino, limited edition The fruit co…