No Tomatoes

I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I have just batted my century in Shimbashi. To anyone dormant in Tokyo the name will instantly conjure images of salarymen, yakitori and scant girls, save for those entertaining more thoroughly later. It’s not a place I come to often, location being one thing, and despite my mounting workaholism, I strive to evade the Venn of salaryman, a term so common it has entered the Japanese vocabulary.

These were my thoughts, partly gathered by Mina as we channelled through the wiry lanes linking chicken to pork to BBQ to eel. Our first stop was an awning, a carrier-bag draping over thin frame to avert the deluge. I was still steeped in sweat however, owing to my sighting a black gut of cloud linger above the spires of Shinjuku as I left the office. Splats like roaches on a windscreen pressed shirt to skin as I fidgeted at the crossing, desperate for the green man, and I ran the rest to the station. By the time I met Mina some stops later, the worst had passed leaving nothing but fingers of water gripping each step as we ascended Shimbashi plaza. Take note of the stationary train wantonly parked as you’ll need it for directions later. Presently, however, you’ll recall I have a bag over my head.

Not really knowing the area, it was a masterstroke of luck: our first bar had just received sanma, a slender mackerel, nice and oily and now in season. A great way to start, but spotting a pause in the drops we paid, took our chances and ran across the park to lucky number two, which served horse, something I had not eaten for a while. I’d forgotten what a pleasure it is, like a damp ballerina flopped upon your tongue. Coming from the fridge, each stamp-sized piece was raw and cool and permeated with myriad micro-stalactites of fat reaching through the red. It seems a little ghoulish to whip up garlic and ginger to accompany in soy sauce, but it’s a wonderful combination. While there we also saw that the chap alongside appeared to be eating mini-Jersey’s with dwarfs: turned out to be chicken bum and garlic shoots. Needless to say that got tacked onto the bill too.

At this point, my centenary was in decent swing, and happy to be spending it with Mina. We chatted about home, and, er, the joys of strip clubs (discovered she’s game) and buoyantly lumbered through the remaining grid of lanterns and landlines. After ten minutes, however, we stammered confronted by a sheer white wall marking the going-ons of a construction site and the insensitive glare of Pronto’s careless serifs. An Advent calendar of doors, openings and archways swung from all sides, yet there was a quiet glow coming from our feet, a small lantern set at the bottom of steps and an innocuous curtain.

A chorus of hurrahs and welcomes resonate before I even mount the last step to see the tiny room of bar and tatami. Everyone is smiling, and as we take two of the five bar-chairs, the man next to us, whom we find is called Kaji, leans over and mentions ‘you have found a good place’. Everyone is happy, and conversation flicks like wildfire between the patrons, a laugh, a crack, a recommendation and a ‘where’re you from’. It’s the kind of place where each person lends to the atmosphere of the room rather than stiffly subscribe to the linen of commerce. It’s the kind of place we adore –and I could hardly believe my luck as they announced horse their speciality too, straight from Kumamoto for which it is renown (Bonus: if you Google Mount Aso, you’ll see where these steeds are reared). Despite my earlier mouthfuls we jumped at the chance: it has been over a year since I last nibbled nape, white lilos of fat the size of a trimmed ten-pound stamp. And served as a platter no less! And yet such was the atmosphere I almost don’t want to dwell on the food: I felt new again, like when I first arrived in Japan and everything was fresh and everyone welcoming. I generally hesitate to so fully embrace such fleeting moments of serendipity, but it was genuine at Yoshi Yoshi, so obvious that they enjoyed our company as much as we enjoyed theirs. There was no insincere exchange of cards, merely one another sharing dishes and stories.

‘I have no money, but I’m on TV offering advice on money!’ confided one of finances wrinkled personalities to Mina, eliciting a wonderful scream as the sublime sake was reawakened. I tried to buy a bottle, but it cannot be bought, it was that rare. So we had to make the most of the opportunity to drink it all there. Yet I could not ignore the homemade plum-wine sleeping in a glass vat in front. Kaji, who had secured the wine, once more ordered a glass for us while the marbled eccentricities of his colleague stumbled from tatami to my shoulders, providing a box of éclairs. Bliss!

It seems trite to compare Yoshi Yoshi to Cheers, but such was the conviviality surging through each bite and laugh. As our names were flicked across the room when new people arrived, the neat black table on the tatami became a pivot as guests rotated to make room for more, changing places with those at the satin-smooth bar to converse, ridicule and delight. I want to keep typing and extend the memories, to not stop so that night can remain infinite and the smiles never diminishing. We could not have chosen a better place for the 100^th entry of No Tomatoes. I can’t wait to take Dad and Edward.

Directions: From Shimbashi Plaza go straight down the street between Pronto and Hirota, and you’ll come across triangle with Ajitoku on the first floor; turn left and you’ll see the sign for Yoshi Yoshi.

This has happened before: an open afternoon where my hand turns to keys not stylus. The huge left-collar of my Vivienne Westwood shirt wilts upon my breast, pink trews and white shoes forelorn. Ito-san, Honda’s new president, is in the studio and we are confined to desks. I would create, but energies have emerged rational recently as I formulate a strategy for my career. Nothing sinister, mind, it’s just that after the abrupt terminations earlier in the year I have not been as focused, one eye on the managers in case I should be pushed as well. It’s stressful being a contractor, and the recent influx of Japanese staff and increased meetings held in Japanese only exerts the isolation. Of course, there are the Americans, but tis hard to set them as rivals in competitions when my sights are set farther afield. I think Mina’s would be too were she not snagged by her malarious nape stinging her movements. An occasional puff of frustration tells me its time to move on, though we had few moments to discuss while in prison.

Keen-readers/Mum may recall the Cave recently written here. It follows then that the gaol-themed Lock Up appeals too to Satomi, and marks the fork where I, no we, no less, for Mina concurs, must part in dinner dining. I’m struggling for words. Perhaps the rubber square set into the floor, and metronomic electrocuted-dummy will better convey the shitty beginnings to this night, though I think what I said at the time was ‘wouldn’t be awesome if the food was great’. It wasn’t, and had the trough not been dug by the Cave last week, Lock Up would be a strong contender for detailing a new low.

Actually, it was okay. Simple, banal, tacky –but acceptable, still. Until I spotted a cockroach planted inches in front, courting my napkin. It is times like this that one may gauge the measure of a man, the one who might, in the face of injustice, the elderly seat occupied by youth, say ‘hang on’ and make motions to correct. Thus it was that I clambered onto the torso next to me (thankfully Mina), while she drew the lethal, or at least hostile blow with a beer mat. A Gallic snigger traversed the low table, till I observed the brown bug scuttling to his elbow. Stefan imitated my recommended action and again it was the girlfriend who sorted the matter out.

Needless to say, that put me off, and though I took some extra nibbles from the army of crap on the table, I could not get out of my mind the question: ‘how close is a cockroach to me now?’ All of which shunted me into Mina, who resignedly requested that my body be removed from her seat after 20 minutes of imposition. Stefan seemed not to care, and slumped back to duty: jesting and ignoring the empty glasses of others.

Back to the experience. Well for a start I was happy Mina should meet Charlene in case our meanderings take us to Paris (which would do wonders for the food aspect, however minimal, of this blog) and I was pleased to meet her boyfriend Alessandre, but chances are should you visit, you won’t see them. Instead you might wonder how you would see anyone, for as desserts were ordered and appeared, staggered, all bulbs extinguished and a strobe instead illuminated our ice-cream (I scream –geddit?). Painfully, torturously, a scene was enacted in the wormhole connecting our cell (forgot to mention that) to the others in the Scooby-Doo interior design. Interns and teenagers dressed in masks and gloves ran to the sound of sirens, chased fortuitously by girls in cop outfits each badged Officer Naughty. But not even that could cause a stir, and seated in my corner, I tried not to think about the heat, nor the stifling air, the fact I was hemmed in by ten others and that there was, possibly, a cockroach inspecting my left ankle.

It was merely yesterday that I was musing how few nice places I had written about recently, that being dumped from Weekender had left me meandering in empty streets of fast-food wrappers and rice-bowls and leaving me to pick over the remains of lunch instead. Had I realised that Satomi was booking last night’s restaurant, I wouldn’t have bothered with my feeble account of F1 -and would have probably eaten more for lunch.

Satomi, as you may recall, relies more on Google than taste, though it must be said Nico seldom gives her time to satisfy both. With scant hours to go on a Friday afternoon, he decided a table for seven is what’s in order. Naturally, in any other city you would be left with, well, leftovers: a chubby chef in a greasy shirt running an out-of town diner; fine for the hangover breakfast, but hardly the venue for supper, nor those employed by Louis Vuitton, for such was the case with Charlene, a friend of Nico’s who had studied with him.

When an invitation to a post-dinner party requests ‘wear white’, one can probably assume who won’t be attending by identifying those in black. Such was Satomi as she made a stand against socialising each night as she accompanied Nico in hosting his friend. I think, however, she was also dressing for our restaurant, which had the unique, um, selling-point of being ‘like a cave!’. Mina had briefly mentioned this as one of the options for Nico’s birthday last weekend, and why she suggested potluck at her’s instead. And so she remained last night, leaving me to quickly stifle my ridiculing as I realised this was actually normal and reasonable for Satomi, though I did warn that it would make excellent fodder for my blog.

A cave, one would expect, is usually underground; imagine my surprise and poorly hidden sneer as she revealed it was located on a fourth floor. But then I’ve been in Tokyo too long to think it would be genuine. As the elevator opened (my god it smelled awful, like a fishmonger’s washing pile), it wasn’t quite the end of the world: there were one or two gold trinkets and the ‘caves’ were instead knobbled head-high partitions that robbed the room of space, but at least ensured privacy. No plastics bats, though I wouldn’t put it beyond the menu to serve them.

Yet for three brief moments as those trinkets fluttered above my expectations, I thought it could be okay, just standard Jap isekaya fare. But when the tray of popcorn arrived with small, shrivelled beans, I almost pitied Satomi, yet couldn’t help but smile as, once Nico had gulped sorely, he declared it delicious and kissed her temple. I wasn’t going to disagree, and hoped that the fish-egg spaghetti I almost gagged on wouldn’t be noticed in its new position: as far away as possible. Frankly, it was terrible. You may notice that many restaurants have those plastic models of the menu: this tasted like that, reheated. It’s a cheap analogy, but it really had that chemical taste, as though those tiny orange ova had spent the past three months in plastic containers at the back of the fridge.

There wasn’t anything I enjoyed; even the salad was screwed by using cabbage leaves in place of lettuce, as dry as an old man’s dead skin with luminous mayo. I didn’t touch the octopus rings, ran a mile from the onion salad –literally, onion shredded, piled, and caked with flakes of urine-smelling prawns –and recoiled to my corner when the beef-avocado gratin arrived. Honestly, how can you put nuggets of avocado, scrapes of old boots and carrots into a ramekin, cover with cheese, and bake. You must be mad: it is as though three dishes were on the go, the cook, either confused or a drunk, putting the wrong ingredients in each dish. It was vile; it was vomit –something confirmed when I observed the impressively-sprayed bathroom. Normally something like that would put me off and make me wretch myself, but having been conditioned by the food going in, someone else’s coming out didn’t seem quite so bad. I just can’t believe Satomi ordered it twice.

We’ve just seen the new trailer for the new Tron film, legacy or something, the work of one Daniel Simon who joined us last year to inspire Honda and inflate himself: great that a car designer can branch out to such a level as to do films, though the vehicles I’ve seen so far aren’t quite up to the rest of his work. I’m not supposed to be reviewing him (already done that on Car Design News), but he did find this place, so worth a mention. F1, as we’ve come to call it, has a different name, but as every wall is covered with race-cars and signed helmets, and, in one space, a Ferrari surf-board, F1 has stuck. I think the guy was a caterer for a team, in which case they ate well: home-made pastas, and home-made sauces with a lovely aperitif. Yesterday it was a cold some-such with two pools of oil on top. The rest was greenish. I’ve fallen a bit short of my previous efforts to identify all that I eat; how nice it is to enjoy conversation and the scrolling news the foot of CNN instead.

Pasta for me was linguine with a kidney-ish meat sauce and small wet patches of parmesan dust. They forgot the large size I ordered, and reasonably if their large falls short of my appetite, they knock the extra Y100 off. The staff are friendly, and with Vadim in our trio, happy to chat in Italian with him. I don’t go quite as frequently as before when Fabian and Nico were still around, and have subsequently found a super Italian buffet in Arc Hills. Should I continue failing to splurged or be splurged for dinner I may write about that too.

It’s one of those mornings where 8 o’clock feels like 6 o’clock; the sky is still and streets unusually empty giving the illusion of time to write about bike bar. It began when Sean hollered ‘Mack!’ and Mack replied ‘Yo’. That was entry, and was, before its license, simply alcohol in a living room. I don’t know how he ever discovered it: presumably Sean doesn’t spend his evenings shouting names in the hope of pirate bars, though with his Irish blood I won’t rule it out.

To approach more quietly, one walks in the direction of Ping Pong’s, but don’t turn right after the bridge, take the next left and walk under Hibiya-sen for eight minutes. It’s somewhere along there, though as Mack has moved on, forget about shouting for directions -you wouldn’t want to wake this peaceful neighbourhood anyway. Despite its proximity to nowhere, people still cram the rafters of this attic room, cigarette smoke circling the bike frames that hang like metal skeletons of outsized bats. More surprising was meeting a girl I’d once had a random picnic with on Hampstead Heath. Flashes of white teeth see-sawed with petty flirtations that were I single would have mistaken for attraction. She was a friend of Nathalie’s, someone who I would love to come out and visit, not least so we could go to bike bar.

This time, however, it is Peter who is visiting. Having emptied my wallet in Ping Pong’s too recently with Oriol, I avoided a repeat and clankered up the black steel fire escape that leads to Mack’s dorm.

Three paragraphs so far is quite a lot when the sum of my recollections of that night is avoiding the cherry in my drink, Mina taking it instead. Peter probably had a Mule, or maybe a Sour also; whatever, it was fantastic, looking like a slightly creamy, curdled lemon, with three razor-edged cubes of ice and apparently a delicious cherry, probably worth a shot on its own –at least that’s how my olive tasted after an earlier Martini. There may have been some whisky in there too. We had seconds and then thirds around the corner, but as that came with a hefty cover charge, I prefer to lay what memories I have with Mack, whoever he is.