So the first part of this post will be food p0rn, shots from tonight’s dinner in a small restaurant on a side street in the Shinbashi area.

I was told that this huge poster represents rankings of the small sushi restaurants in Tokyo. It is produced quarterly. I was given one as a souvenier because, apparently, this place ranked pretty highly. It’s a large sheet – laid it out on the bed for the photo.


We started with dried soba:


Sashimi – I could have eaten this entire platter myself but had to share with 4 other people:

Salad – the white chunks are not tofu or chicken, they’re grilled tuna:


A Japanese take on a classic Chinese dish, sweet and sour pork:


Our waitress, caught at an inopportune moment. She’s holding the ingredients for hotpot, or is it called nabe here?

Here it is:


I was so full after this (and a little tipsy after drinking half a bottle of sake myself) so I didn’t bother to photograph the last course, congee.

After dinner, raining fairly heavily so just back to the hotel. But after that, eventually over to the branch of Tsutaya in Roppongi Hills. (Sorry, didn’t have camera with me.) This shop is open from 07:00 to 28:00, which I presume means until 4 AM.

The ground floor is a Starbucks and a bookshop that is primarily devoted to art, design, photography and architecture, with huge sections on food and travel. Think about that for a minute. An art book store open till 4 AM 7 days a week. Think we’ll see anything like this in HK soon? It is to laugh.

Upstairs is a CD/DVD shop.

Next door is Foo:D Magazine, a 24 hour grocery store run by Seiyu (which is partly owned by Wal*Mart). The shop concentrates on imported and higher end stuff, including excellent departments for meat, fish, cheese and a bakery (though the bakery shelves were empty at midnight).

Now please don’t think I’m turning into Brian Donovan but here are shots of three of the more unusual snacks I picked up – well, unusual varieties of brand names we all know well, but only available in Japan as far as I know:




And that’s about it. Work, lunch and dinner with colleagues, no bars, no girls, about to get into bed with just a book.

Hongkie Town
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