Nana bar, Golden Gai (Shinjuku, Tokyo)

Welcome to Golden Gai Shinjuku, Tokyo
Tags : forgotten Tokyo, micro bars, brothels, city of pleasures, time wrap, Flamenco
Golden Gai is a surprising anachronism in the heart of one of the most modern and active part of Tokyo : Shinjuku. When you come out of the subway/Yamanote station in the evening like the thousands upon thousands of young Japanese who go out for fun and dinner, you don't expect to find this tiny block of alleys and small rickety buildings which seem to come straight from the 1930s' or 1940s'. And actually you may come repeatedly to Shinjuku and pass this forgotten island without noticing it, hidden behind tall and modern buildings.

Golden Gai is a roughly square area stuck inside the modern city, with something like 200 low buildings that seem to be made as much with tin and planks than brick and mortar. The classic Japanese oldie below seems appropriate as you feel more like in the 1940s' or 1950s' here. This was all brothels in the past, every single building in here was for prostitution, I was explained that you could gauge the girl in the room at the street level, then walk up the stairs with her, and the madam owning the venue was sleeping in the small attic above the whole. When the thing was over, you could leave through the discreet back door so as not to stumble upon other clients... This sounds like today's love hotels where discretion goes as far as speaking wityour hands being the only thing indentifiable.
In the post-world-war-II era, somewhere during the 1950s' or 1960s', open prostitution was forbidden and the shacks were turned into bars and stayed that way to this day. the place is not very open to foreigners except a few bars and it's better to go there alone and speak a bit of Japanese if you want to experience one of these bars (which are not as cheap as they look as many ask for table fees).
Credit for the picture on left : IncontournableTokyo.com

Listen to My Japanese Oldie (a Japanese beauty from the 1960s')

A dark alley lined with bars Here we are, the forgotten red-light district of Shinjuku, where bars rose up from from brothels... A walk at dark is really a travel to a bigone era, and this small block stuck in a time wrap makes you intuitively feel like the old-time Japanese towns were like. Shinjuku is known for being the neighborhood for all sort of pleasures, restaurants, bars and sex, we'd say sin city in other latitudes but there's no concept like sin in the Japanese culture. The Shinjuku station, with its string of subway lines plus the Yamanote ring line, see 3,5 million commuters a day, and watching the thousands of young people going out of the underground station in the evening is always impressing. Their destination is probably not Golden Gai, the area being full of venues that are more fit to their taste, but still, the narrow alleys of Golden Gai were probably a precursor to the entertainment magnet that this part of Tokyo has become. The Nana bar Here we are : in the middle of this tiny and messy block, we found the Nana bar,, which is probably the world's tinies Flamenco bar. A square miniature building made of red bricks and mortar lurking in a dark corner with only a bright sign reading the mysterious words "Rincon Flamenco Nana"... This place is a mythic venue for the Flamenco passionates of Japân, and you may know that the Japanese are the most active of the Flamenco cult world wide, traveling in large numbers every year for the Flamenco festival in Jerez de la Frontera. This bar is some sort of mirror bar of Cave 27 in Montmartre, where the Flamenco fan and expert Takemoto-san officiates since a few months. Just for you to check how the Japanese are serious regarding Flamenco (like they are with natural wine), take a look at the only monthly magazine in the world devoted to Flamenco, my Spanish doesn't seem to help here....
I shot these pictures in the alleys of Golden Gai almost clandestinely, as there are signs saying that pictures are forbidden in Golden Gai (probably too many tourists went beyond the bearable limit). Kikuchi-san, in the Nana bar, temple of Flamenco Once inside, you discover a bar with brownish tones and dim lights, lines of bottles like whisky and Cinzano, not a sophisticate bar in terms of drinks from a quick glance, but a place with a history and the feel of vibes from the many musicians who played Andalusian music in the tiny venue. People obviously smoke in there and I imagine that when it's full it must feel like in the small bars of Andalusia (which I don't know at all alas). When we dropped at the Nana bar, it was pretty early and there was no one inside, so we had the opportunity to chat with Kikuchi-san, better known under her surname Pilone. She manages the place two days a week, on mondays and tuesdays (the other days you'll find someone else at the bar). Check her blog here, but it's in Japanese.

Tne Nana bar, I learn, is the must-visit bar for any Spanish musician or whatever-nationality of amateurs of Flameco, and this dark spot on the map of Tokyo has a parallel life of its own, written in the etheric dimension of this world...
You can see on the videos on left and right what we probably missed for having come to early (we were on our way to a tachinomi elsewhere in Shijuku) in this bar, even Russians come here to play guitar and sing (Vladimir Vissotsky seems to come back)...

There's no table fee in this bar (unlike many other bars in Golden Gai, where this entry/table fee can cost around 700 Y, to which you must ad the drinks costs). From the drinks-menu page, you can see that Nana bar is affordable : Beer at 600 Y (4,65 € or 6 € when I wrote this story, as the Yen is going down sharly these days__good time to go to Japan...), Wine at 600 Y, Whisky (Nikka) 600 Y, Bourbon 700 Y, Scotch 800 Y, Gin 700 Y, Tequila 800 Y, Sake 700 Y... You can also get some tapas to eat along, at 500 Y to 800 Y a plate. Nana, a Flamenco legend On a distant wall of the tiny venue, hovering over our heads, the beautiful picture of Nana is haunting us. Is she Japanese or Spanish ? you could almost think she's Spanish here...
Our host told us about this inspired woman who settled in this bar in the 1960s' (if I remember correctly) to distill her love for the Flamenco music and culture. She died a few years ago (not long ago actually) and some one followed suit, a man named En Hikoma, according to this web page written by a Anne-Laure Pham, a French food blogger.
Nana was a mystery for the Japanese, who said she looked Spanish, and for the Spaniards who said she looked like a gipsy. Nana-san created this venue 50 years ago, say around 1963, probably when these former brothels were turned into bars. She managed this small place for 40 years, sleeping upstairs in a small room. The man who took up the bar after her was also one of the pioneers of Flamenco in Japan, helping the Japanese to discover this music, dance and life culture. Drinking sake in a Flamenco bar Drinking sake in a Flamenco bar was quite exotic, but I couldn't choose to just have beer or a whisky, especially that we were on our way to more sake and that the blends don't suit me very well. Our host poured me a glass of sake from the Aomori prefecture, a Shoroku if I understood the name correctly. No masu here to let the glass overflow like they do in the tachinomis, but still a very pleasant sake. More bars

Nana bar 1-1-8 Kabukicho, Shinjuku, Tokyo 160-0021 phone 03 3200 1877 Nana bar's website

A parking lot at the edge of Golden Gai This dark backwater of Shinjuku also has its eerie parking lots which look so beautiful at night, and this one seemed to accomodate a single spot with nonetheles its yellow, roofed ticketing machine and its jidohanbaiki, shining bright like beacons in the dark alleys Strolling in Golden Gai (Nana bar at 2:08 min)