Tokyo standing bar : Aji No Fue

Good time after work Okachimachi, Tokyo (Japan)
If there is one type of utmost-Japanese drinking place, it must be the tachinomi. Often mistaken for an izakaya, a tachinomi is a standing-only bar, a place where (like other types of bars here) Japanese workers and salarymen go with colleagues or alone to indulge in a few drinks and light dishes at the end of the afternoon. That's their way to let the steam off after a long day of routine work, and this is also the grey time zone between work and home, the one probably many spouses hate because that's when their husbands get glued to these smoke-filled venues which prevent them from arriving early at home (so to say with the long commuting distances in metro and train).
Tachonomi are the true heirs of the shitamachi life, the old-neighborhood and ancient-Japan way of life. Tachinomi is a Japanese word (立ち飲み) made of two words, drinking and standing, it sums up pretty well what it is a bout : a standing bar. After WWII, with the attraction for western ways, the Japanese have turned toward what they somehow thought as more civilized venues including seating and private tables, places that were also more women friendly. Up to this day you virtually see no women in a tachinomi, it's a man's thing where you drink and chat with male colleagues.

Walking in While tachinomis can still be found here and there in Tokyo, you'll be more lucky in the shitamashi part of Tokyo. Shitamashi means literally lower town in Japanese, and in substance it refers to the old era blue-collar neighborhoods, A typical shitamashi neighborhood is for instance the area near Ueno and Okachimachi on the Yamanote subway line, or in the streets near Minowa along the Hibiya subway line (also not far from Ueno). See this Tokyo subway map to locate the area, it's on the upper/center/right of the map. Anyway, our friend Mamada led me that evening to a particular tachinomi located between Ueno and Okachimachi so that I could enjoy one of his favorite drinking spots. Mamada spent his youth in Tokyo near the Nippori station further north on the Yamanote line and he knows these neighborhoods pretty well, Japan being so safe that as a teenager he could go around the lively Ameyoko Arcade between Ueno and Okachimachi without his parents having to worry.
We showed up at 6:30 pm if I remember; B. went somewhere else that day, she wasn't too much attracted by the tachinomi thing, knowing too well that it was virtually a men-only venue and that she would have all the eyes on her in there.
Just as we walked in, other patrons were beginning to slide the door open and fill the place. As you can see on the picture, it's a men-only magnet, and groups of colleagues as well as lone individuals rapidly gather toward the end of the afternoon. The typical tachinomi isn't open that late anyway, it may open toward 5pm and closes at 10pm (Japanese are serious people, tomorrow is a working day...). A corner of he sake section at Yoshiike, many from Niigata Something has to be said about this Aji-No-Fue tachinomi : according to our friend Mamada and although it's not really official, this tachinomi has been opened long time ago by the owners of the Yoshiike depaato which sits almost on the other side of this pedestrian side street. Depaato is the Japanese word (derived from English) for department store, and the most well-known and high-end depaatos in Japan are chains like Mitsukoshi, Seibu or Seitan, but there are countless smaller, family-owned depaatos in this country. And the Yoshiike Family Department Store is one of them, with branches in a few businesses including hotels if I'm right. It has a particular expertise in the fishing-products retail, and its street-level fish shop is a Tokyo favorite in this part of town, you don't need to go to Tsukiji to get abundant and fresh sea products when you live near here. You can see near there on the narrow street behind the depaato several neatly-parked trucks which are used for the transportation of fresh sea food (picture on right). But Yoshiike has also a large sake and alcohol section on the 4th floor (250 square meters) with a large selection of sake from the Niigata Prefecture, an administrative area located along the sea of Japan (west coast of Honshu).
I like this story with this Yoshiike store because it reminds me of the close-knit community feel of the Auvergnats and Aveyronnais who came to Paris a century ago and made their way upward through the café and bar business : the initial founders of the Yoshiike store came similarly from the Niigata Prefecture and as the Ueno station was the terminal for Niigata immigrants settling in the big city, they opened their shop right here, beginning with a small retail shop and adding other ones until they built this multi-story depaato and expanded their group in other branches. Now, not only their sake section is largely Niigata-centered because of grassroots solidarity, but from what Mamada heard, they also managed to open this tachinomi standing bar, as a gesture of solidarity with all the Niigata natives who live in the area. There, you get a good choice of very affordable Niigata sakes by the cup, at affordable price, and for the Niigata domestic expats, it offers a genuine home feel.
This again shows the intertwined relation between modern business practices and grassroot traditions in Japan, this country is indeed very pragmatic and there's room for old-class feelings even if business seems to prime at first glance.
Before going to the tachinomi, we had a look to the sake section where Mamada bought a bottle. There's a very large selection of regular 1,8-liter bottles, hard to decipher for someone unfamiliar with Kanji like me, but you just want to pick randomly one of these bottles (given the price tag is in your acceptable cost range) and try it at home. The ordering counter A typical tachinomi is a long narrow room going deep into the building. This one was maybe 20 meters deep and 4 meter wide, with high tables all along the walls and a couple of ones in the middle. when we walked in it seems very quiet, like everyone was having a solitary drink in his own thoughts but after a while it was buzzing with people speaking and laughing, the tasty Niigata sake had performed its daily miracle. Something surprising when you come from western Europe is that people often smoke in the bars, this seems allowed and consensual, that's also something I like in Japan, the tyranny of health obsession and forbidding laws hasn't yet taken over. I don't mind personally when other people smoke and I think that these non-smoking rules have turned our popular café-tabac in France into bland deserted places.
The ordering counter is at the bottom left of the tachinomi. There, two women pour the sake of your choice and you find also the small dishes to go with. Japan is a country where you drink with food, with these small okazu dishes, like the tapas in Spain and the zakuskis in Russia. Our glasses being filled Comes our turn, I let Mamada choose the sakes, and he selects a different one for each of us so that we can taste the difference. Of course don't expect to find anything written in Romanji (in Roman letters), it's all in Japanese characters (Kanji) but you can just point to whatever sign hanging above for the sake and show the small plate you want. The prices are very affordable, proving that Tokyo is a town where you can have a good drink for little money in spite of its reputation and in spite of the strength of the Yen when we visited (it was close to 10 € for 1000 Y when a few years ago it was around 7,5 € for 1000 Y). A cup of sake in its traditional square mazu box cost from 250 Y for the cheapest quality, and up to 400 Y and 500 Y for more elaborate sakes, which is not very expensive at all (try to get a glass of wine in Paris for 2 or 3 €...). As for the dishes, there were many different okazu plates, either at 200 Y or 300 Y (1000 Y make 9,26 € or 12 USD), and the last time we went there we got delicious raw tuna for 200 Y a plate. The waiters fill the cups the traditional Japanese way : the fill the cup and let it overflow almost until the square mazu itself overflows, so that when you think you've almost finished your cup, you can still rely on the sake in the square container and keep drinking for a while... Feeling at home A tachinomi is certainly not an easy place to go to when you're a Westerner unfamiliar with Japan, but the barrier is mostly psychological, people will probably be surprised at first to see a Gaïjin walk in there but they'll also be happy to see you appreciate their traditional way of life and drinks. At least I felt very welcome in this place and this may have come that I was myself very happy to be there, particularly after a couple of cups... I love these places, this is the real Japan I'm looking for. Forget about Roppongi, Shibuya, Shinjuku or Ginza, these standing bars are the real thing !
I would still advise not to go there in groups so that you'll not disturb the atmosphere, and two or three seems the maximum, especially that many of these tachinomis are cramped places with little room to move along the counter. Be cautious also with the pictures, I took myself a few of them but I have my ways and I don't use a flash. The middle table You might ask what we had, and I happily took a few notes because I'm not very familiar with these Sake names : The first sake was a Hokusetsu, a Junmai Ginjo at 500 Yen, while the other sake was a Midori Kawa, a Daiginjo costing 500 Yen a cup. Both of course were Niigata sakes. Excellent sakes, onctuous, discreetly aromatic and generating a subtle euphoria that makes you understand that this is the right stuff. I'm not very familiar with the different areas where good sake is made in Japan, but it seems that Niigata is among the top regions, with its mountains, and a good rice growing in the proximity of the sea. There's something akin to the appellation regarding sake, and the quality of the water of a particular region goes with the type of rice to build the reputation of the sake regions. Last time I was in Japan, we visited a couple of breweries in the Fukushima Prefecture, namely Daishichi which is a mid-size, wellknown brewery, and also Himonoya, a very small artisan producer. Both were relying on manual work performed by experienced workers for the precise and elaborate stages of sake making. In spite of the tsunami-induced nuclear catastrophe, they're still active from what I've heard and there is a steady solidarity to keep buying their sake (B. and I know someone in Tokyo who orders their sake for this purpose). The Fukushima region is split in three different areas and thus offers different style of sakes. Niigata, maybe because of its pure mountain water, produces sake with very pure aromas, from what I read here and there. Street nearby (Ueno-Okachimachi) You may not see this cutie in a tachinomi...

Yoshiike depaato (near the tashinomi) satellite pic
Yoshiike depaato street map

Comments

[hikalu]

Nice one! There are many kind of Tachinomi bar here or there. ;)