Eat, drink, travel Japan.
A tall chu-hi can at any 7-Eleven, 9% alcohol, lemon, ice-cold, costs ¥180. The same volume of beer at a hotel bar in Marunouchi will set you back ¥1,400 and arrive in a glass two-thirds the size. That is the gap I want to talk about. Omoide Yokocho at 19:30. Three of these stalls will … Read more
Hiroyasu Kayama brews bitters from wormwood he grew in Saitama. He stands in a white lab coat behind an L-shaped counter on the ninth floor of an office block in Nishi-Shinjuku, mortar in hand, grinding spices into powder that will end up in your daiquiri. The bar is called Bar Benfiddich. There is no English … Read more
The first thing you notice is the smoke. Charcoal smoke, the lighter-fluid kind nobody admits to using, drifting between the lower branches of a hundred-year-old somei-yoshino. Then the sound, which is plastic on plastic: the click of a paper cup against a 300ml bottle of nama sake, the crinkle of a konbini bag, the squeak … Read more
You’re standing in the basement of a department store in Shinjuku, holding a bottle of sake by the neck, and the only character on the front you can read is ¥. The label is a wall of kanji, two numbers with a plus sign, a percentage, and a date that does not match the western … Read more
It was the second pour of Yoichi single malt at a Hokkaido bar called Crossroad that justified the whole trip. Eleven days in, three flights, two shinkansen, six cities, more sake cups than I can count, and the moment I sat down at that backlit shelf and asked the bartender to pick what I should … Read more
The first time I really understood sake pairing, I was sitting at the counter of a tiny seven-seat kappo in Yanaka. The proprietor, Mr Sato, watched me start with a chilled daiginjo and a piece of grilled mackerel and shook his head, almost imperceptibly. Then he poured me a cup of warm kimoto junmai from … Read more
It’s a Wednesday at 19:30 on the tenth floor of a Shinjuku building I would never have walked into without instructions, and the proprietor is sliding three small glasses across the counter towards me. Niigata. Yamagata. Akita. He pours each one to the brim and a little over, the way most sake bars in Tokyo … Read more
In late 2008, a struggling whisky brand started a campaign that would, within 12 months, see the number of Japanese bars pouring whisky and soda jump from roughly 15,000 to more than 60,000. By the end of the next year it was past 80,000. Suntory’s sales of Kakubin, the squat yellow-labelled bottle that gave the … Read more
The smell hits before the sign does. Charcoal smoke and frying oil, soy and beer foam, the faint reek of cigarette ash from a bar where smoking is still legal. You stop, turn, and there’s a doorway you missed twice on the same street: a noren curtain at chest height, fluorescent strips behind it, and … Read more
I ordered otōshi three times. I didn’t realise I’d ordered it once. The first time I sat down at an izakaya in Tokyo, the staff brought a small dish of pickled mountain vegetables I hadn’t asked for. I ate them, smiled at the bartender, and wondered if I’d accidentally eaten someone else’s food. Twenty minutes … Read more
Yamazaki sells out the moment its booking lottery opens, and you need to apply months ahead. Yoichi runs free tours all day, walk-up tickets sometimes available the same morning. The two most famous Japanese whisky distilleries are 1,500 km apart, run on opposite booking systems, and ask very different things of you as a visitor. … Read more
In 1994 there were 11 breweries in Japan. By 2024 the country had crossed 700, more than England, more than France, and on a per-capita basis closing in on the United States. Walk into a 7-Eleven in Yokohama and you can pick from around 300 different craft beers in the fridge. Most travellers never notice. … Read more
Can you day-trip a sake brewery from Tokyo and actually be back in Shinjuku for dinner? Yes, and you do not need a JR Pass, a tour guide, or a single word of Japanese to make it work. The harder question is which brewery, because the answer reshapes the day. A 90-minute Ozawa Shuzo tour … Read more
The first time I met someone who really knew awamori, his name was Tanaka and he was the kind of cellar guide who calls every barrel by its volume in kame, the earthenware jars Okinawan distillers have used for centuries. I was standing with him in the wooden cellar at Chuko Distillery in Tomigusuku, fifteen … Read more
Walk into the Sapporo Beer Garden’s Genghis Khan Hall on a Tuesday and a 100-minute all-you-can-drink-and-grill plate runs about ¥5,200, lamb included. Walk five blocks south to a private counter in Susukino and a single pour of 25-year Hokkaido whisky comes in over ¥6,000 with no food at all. The same city, the same evening, … Read more