There are a surprising amount of restaurants in Japan, and the nice thing about that is that it gives you a lot of options when you are looking to go out. My town of Okubo is no exception. The other day a flier was delivered to our mailbox with a listing and description of local restaurants that are off the beaten path. I was happy to see my favorite local yakitori listed, as well as a new cafe that opened up a while back that we enjoyed.
Last night Kuniko and I both arrived home late at about the same time, so we decided that instead of going into our hot (34 degrees C!) kitchen and cooking something that we’d go try another of the local restaurants. We walked about five minutes from our house to ã˜ã‚…ã‚“ã·ã† (Junpuu), a teppanyaki place that looks remarkably upscale compared to the surrounding neighborhood.
Most of my teppanyaki experience is based around experiences at Benihana restaurants in the San Francisco bay area. You might not be surprised to find out that authentic teppanyaki places are nothing like Benihana – I sure was. The master of this place had a big teppan (iron platter – built into a bar) that he worked. We sat at a table in the restaurant so that we could watch him cook. The place was decorated in a modern style, with lots of hardwood and secondary lighting. They had a lot of sho-chu bottles to choose from, and the whole place was air conditioned with jazz music playing in the background and plenty of cold beer available.
We were pretty hungry so we ordered a couple of beers, a prosciutto salad, tonpeiyaki (pork steak wrapped in egg topped with bonito flakes and a spicy sauce), タイ風エビãƒãƒª (Thai style shrimp with chili sauce), and some fried rice that Kuniko ordered – apparently based on the food that the staff gets when they work there. We loved the food and the atmosphere, and the master sent us over some soup to try with our second round of beers. It was surprisingly inexpensive, and we’ll definitely be back.
Right next door (and another listing on the flier of local restaurants) was a bar with the unforgettable name of “Red Spanky”. I had been by the area before in the past and it always looked closed – turns out that it is open from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m., so I had just missed the operating hours. This place really stuck out on the flier (not only because of the name) because of the hours. With Japan really shutting down after the last train of the night (usually around midnight or one) there isn’t much reason to stay open. These guys were serving a niche – people that head back to Okubo and still want a cocktail or two before going home.
Actually regular bars are not so common in Japan. Most places serve drinks with food, and it’s a little weird to just go and order drinks. There are the “snack” bars, but with your drinks you need to talk to some woman and pay for her drinks, and that’s not so interesting to me. So I was glad to find out about Red Spanky and give it a try with Kuniko.
The place was very small and dark, with a bar dominating the room. There were some tables in the corner, and about six people drinking there. The first thing that struck me was that the owner and all the customers were young – maybe 21 to 30 years old. The music was mellow hip-hop, and they had a TV playing some movies with the sound off and the subtitles on. We pulled up a chair at the bar, and the had a couple of cocktails. The master of the place made them with great care (we had ordered some things that locals don’t usually order I guess – tequila sunrise and a vodka tonic). We also ordered up some snacks to go with the drinks (some of the snacks had funny Japanese names, making it more fun to order them) and soaked in the atmosphere. It was weird that a place like this had always been right near my house and I had no idea about it. The young people working there were really friendly and talkative, and they made us feel welcome.
We had two rounds of drinks there, and then walked two minutes to the grocery store, and another two minutes home. It was nice to sample more local places – I’m sure that we’ll be back to both places soon.
