The Japanese love to drink, and they love beer and spirits. You cannot help but come to this conclusion when you see it done in most every jdorama you watch, or featured in many CFs and promotional material, or even when you are walking around from early evening until late at night in relatively crowded places and see ladies and gentlemen – still wearing their office attires and toting those business cases – stumbling out of well-lit establishments being all boisterous and, yes, drunk. After-work drinks are a norm, and it doesn’t even matter that it is the middle of the week and they have to go to work the next morning. Last November, after watching the CNBLUE concert, I, Peach, Jas and Slow finally felt hunger pangs and decided to look for a place to eat. We found ourselves wandering around Sakae, in the area filled with many drinking places or, as they call it, izakayas.
The word izakaya is coined from the Japanese words “i“, which means “to stay”, and “sakaya”, or a shop/store that sells sake (their rice wine). Basically, it is a place where you can sit down and stay for a while, drinking alcohol, wines and spirits, not just necessarily sake. The original concept involves low tables and having to sit on tatami mats. Of course, as time passed, there have been changes and now the modern izakayas had counter tables and stools. They have become more similar to your usual tavern, pub, or bar.
Finding a place to eat at that hour (it was around 9pm) was quite a challenge. Some places were already filled with rowdy crowds (had too much to drink already, eh?) and some were already too hazy with smoke (yes, the Japanese also love to smoke. A LOT.) that going in would mean having to cover your nose the whole time.
And most of the signs were written in Japanese. Worse, in Kanji. We spotted one store and saw some people going in. My companions charged ahead, and I lagged a bit slowly behind, trying to read the katakana on the sign. I’m slow at reading anything Japanese, even if it is in katakana, and then by the time I made out “bikini girls”, my three companions were already inside the hallways. I ran after them, and in the process managed to peek inside one of the doors, and saw a couple of ladies dressed provocatively with two guys. At that point, my companions were coming back out, murmuring something like, “darn, it looks fishy, I saw some girls…..”. Damn right, it is! We were all laughing by the time we stepped outside on the street and were talking about the “bikini girls” part of the sign.
Thank goodness for our veeeeeeeery little katakana-reading skills.
The next establishment we came across looks legit, and it was by the main road, and we saw lots of people going in there as well. Another tip we learned from our travels: if a place is hoppin’, it’s probably good.
Before we could go in, however, one of the waiters met us at the door, asked how many people (in Japanese), and we answered “four people, yo-nin“. He then took out a piece of paper with something written on it. On it was written a formal apology in English, saying something like, “as much as we would like to serve you, our staff do not know how to communicate in English, so please go somewhere else that you will be entertained as you deserve”.
Somehow this didn’t sit well with me. After all, we have been to several dining places where the staff do not know how to speak English, but we were still able to place our orders, even just by pointing at stuff on the menu. Resigned, we handed the note back to the guy, stepped back out on the street and resumed walking.
Finally, we came to this place, and scored! It’s called Kinsan Beer Sakaba. From what I can surmise in the few stuff I came across online, it’s part of a chain of wine bars or beer halls in the country.
The jolly guy who met us by the door does not know a word of English, but he was all smiles and perky greeting. He led us to a table with high chairs and out came another equally jolly guy with the menu. He, too, does not know English, but he’s game to take our orders with signs, and also gamely tries to understand our halting Japanese. We even looked up stuff on the internet and showed the photos to him to give him an idea what we wanted.
And what do you know, he knows Chinese! Slow, who is from Singapore, managed to communicate well with him, asking him questions about some stuff on the menu. And even when they could not understand each other on some aspects, sign and body language did the trick. We were in high spirits now.
The place was relatively small which, I think, was the whole point of the place. It’s cozy, and made for groups to closely huddle together in the table. There were corners with tables, and they were already filled. There was also a long counter with stools on it. We had the middle table with high chairs to ourselves.
I wanted to take photos of the rest of the place, but I felt it was impolite to take them with the people there. They might not want to have their photos posted up anywhere, haha!
I will confess to having forgotten exactly what most of our orders were. And I didn’t take tabs of how much they cost. After all, we were a group, and we just ordered whatever, just to get a taste of how Japanese pulutan is like. Also, we somehow split the bill four-ways, and I think Slow even covered a couple of the orders. I did, however, manage to take photos.
Misokatsu is Nagoya’s take on the traditional tonkatsu, or deep-fried pork cutlets. This one was served with shredded cabbage, and sprinkled with sweet, miso-based sauce (hence, the name misokatsu) and crushed sesame seeds. Normally, this would have been served with rice, but this is not really the time to be eating rice, in a place as this, haha!
Verdict?
You can’t go wrong with chicken (either fried or grilled or roasted) when it’s in Japan or Korea. Just know that.
In the pic above, the upper left photo is that of tebasaki, which is another famous dish in Nagoya (and what Jas specifically looked up online and showed our guy – yes, he was our guy). Tebasaki are seasoned, deep-fried chicken wings that are slightly spicy. There is no batter used in frying it, and as finishing, it is sprinkled with sesame seeds. I remember us loving it, especially when paired with beer.
On the upper right is the hitsumabushi, or marinated and barbecued eel. I remember thinking it was tasty, but nothing spectacular. They say it’s good for building up stamina, though.
I don’t recall exactly what the two at the bottom of the pic are. I also vaguely remember one of us ordering sunagimo, or fried chicken gizzard.
I think most of you are already aware that I do not really drink. But on this trip to Japan, I developed a sorta-addiction to chu-hai. In fact, in most places we dined at, chu-hai was my default drink. This time, though, my three companions ordered beer. So I though, what the heck, it won’t hurt. And ordered a tall glass myself.
This is Kirin beer, by the way. We know where our loyalties lie. *cue Arashi’s CM of Kirin products*
I liked how their beer tasted, although I must say Kirin packs quite a punch. I was feeling its effects while Peach and I were making that relatively long walk back to our hotel. When we got back home and dined at a Japanese resto in Baguio City, I ordered one can of Kirin, and even my dinner companions said it was strong. And they are already seasoned beer drinkers!
This was how our table looked like. Slow ordered ramen, I think, because the small servings of the deep-fried dishes weren’t enough. And this was after the concert of CNBLUE, so we were also checking out the Twitter and Instagram accounts of Jonghyun, haha! well, THEY were checking them. I think my phone battery was already dead by that time.
I enjoyed this izakaya experience and wished I could have tried more. Maybe one in every city? I’ll have to add that to my growing list of things-to-do-when-I-go-back-to-Japan. Soon.
Missed this crew. When’s the next CNBLUE concert in Japan, I wonder? We gotta do this again!
