Coffee Day in Tokyo

コーヒーの日


My morning cup.

Golden Week, Japan. Golden Week is a mash-up of holidays (green day, kid's day, some other day) that all come together to give Japanese people a kind-of week off. This year, Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday were working days, sandwiched between some long weekends. I am freelance so I was off the whole time.

The point I'm getting at is that this one week is when everyone has a holiday. Leaving Tokyo is horrible. Traffic is insane. Serene nature is inundated with city folk. Disneyland . . . maybe you can ride 2 or 3 attractions in an entire day.

Stay-cation is the way to go.

Anyways, I spent a day cycling around to local coffee shops.



First up is Bear Pond in Shimokitazawa. Only open for a few hours a day, this spot is kind of revered as one of the world's espresso meccas. Katsu Tanaka is absolutely fanatical about the stuff here, and an espresso will come out as less than an ounce of bitter chocolate that I think sends most people to the nearest Starbucks for something they are used to.



Unless you know that this is what you want, you might want to go with one of the other drinks, all of which are excellent. Dude lived in NY for a few decades, so you can ask him about coffee in English.





There seems to be a cafe boom in Tokyo, by the sheer number of magazines and books devoted to the places. I should say, a nerdy coffee boom. Tokyo actually led the planet in cafes back in the 60s, but these places, some of which remain, are often just smoky hangouts for old dudes who could care less about the flavor of their drink.

This perception of Tokyo being a coffee town is, I think, an illusion. The specific kind of shop that I'm searching for, airy, open spaces where people hang out and mingle, seem to be only a handful. Places with art on the walls and good music on the stereo. Well, minus the art and music I guess that would be Starbucks.



Nozy Coffee wasn't far away by bicycle.



The first branch of this excellent roaster is somewhere near the beach, probably next to the beach houses of the residents of Setagaya, where this 2nd shop is.

The coffee here is all single origin, and a hipster coffee nerd could have a field day with their variety.





I had a french press of something-or-other. Yeah, I'm obviously note that into the details. Atmosphere is what I like, and Nozy seems more like a place I would just go to buy beans for my home.

I heard you get a free cup if you buy beans here.



If anything reminds me of the San Francisco coffee shops back home, Streamer is it.



Just park your pisto out front, and you are good to go. There is art on the walls. The soundtrack was the latest Wiz Khalifa. The fashions were intentional.



The owner is some kind of world champion latte art guy, so expect a beautiful cup.

This place should be teeming with 20-something hipsters on MacBooks, but it isn't. Instead, being surrounded by some of the most exclusive high rises in Tokyo, this is a family hangout. Tons of kids bouncing around, playing gameboys, and drinking coffee.

Weird.

Four cups was enough for 1 afternoon. There are a few more places to speak on in this area, like the mega old spot with massive ikebana arrangements on the tables and the soup-nazi spot in Kichijoji. By the way, don't use the pop reference soup-nazi in Japan. People will think you are talking about real nazis and it is awkward.

April 2013

Ridiculous month for food, as I did a few high-end food tours.


Ishikawa is located on a side street in Kagurazaka, an area of Tokyo I know almost nothing about. If you can make it here, expect the highest level of seasonal Japanese cuisine.


Jiro Roppongi. The famed son of even more famed Jiro Ono is much friendlier than expected. And this shop is much easier to get that reservation, if Jiro is on your checklist.


Jiro, the main Sukiyabashi branch, is so popular now with foreigners that the major hotels have one person on Jiro duty on the 1st of every month.

I made a reservation for some clients a few months back, and it was a veritable nightmare. I'll write about it when I'm in the mood.




Ukai Toriyama is located an hour out of town near Mount Takao. This is the place to take out of town guests. Every group is seated in their own private bungalow in a beautiful Japanese garden.

Cost performance is very high.


Hato's Bar is legit. While other spots are doing American barbecue, they all seem aimed at richer-than-shit bankers. Peep the Vice video!




You so ugly . . .


My go-to nihonshu.


Ryugin. Everything during this 3 hour meal is insane.


Especially this strawberry. Actually, when we ate it, it was a little underwhelming. Flavor-wise, tastes like a strawberry. But watch this video of how they make it.



After watching all the videos on that channel, I want to go back.


Fuck this train line. Sorry Nagoya, but this train line sucks.








Random waterfall near Shirahone Onsen. The mountain was oozing water in some places, hemorrhaging in others.


泡の湯


3cm visibility. The men and women each have their own entrance into the mixed-gender bath.


Dinner at said onsen hotel.




I did it like 3 years ago. Never again. That is 1000 miles in a day for those in America. It is retarded.


Maybe in a rally car.








Shit, there looked to be a rad campground with secret onsens about 5km further. A minute later, a ski tour came down. One of them recognized me from the ramen site. Random.

Then I went home instead of camping. Weak!


Sup, wasabi.




www.ramenadventures.com

Thailand . . . Let's Do and Let's Don't

タイー



Thailand is probably on everyone's bucket list. I spent 10 days in the Chiang Mai area and the Bangkok area. Here is some simple advice so you Don't make the same mistakes, and are sure to take advantage of the rad things things to Do in this country.



Food is ridiculous in Thailand. For a paltry sum you can dine at some really excellent spots. For a little more, like what you would pay for a medium priced sushi meal in Tokyo, you can have some of the best food in the world. Do eat a lot in Thailand. The above, a young coconut filled with massaman curry, was eaten at the Riverside something-or-other in Chiang Mai. It's in all the guidebooks. Probably my favorite of the area.



Chiang Mai is a sprawling city in the north of Thailand. Sprawling, yes, but most of the good spots for tourists are in a very centralized area, surrounded by a moat. Our hotel was a 20-30 minute walk from this moat. Tuk tuks will take you anywhere for about 100 baht, which I realize is paying too much, but whatever. $3 to ride a taxi is kind of cheap.



You might want to try and stay somewhere in the moat area, though. There are about a thousand guesthouses ranging from dirt cheap to nice.



Do take a cooking class.



The cooking classes are all similar in Chiang Mai, with some minor, yet important, differences. All of them take you to the market for explanations.



Do try some fried grubs with kaffir lime.









Do go to the Thai Farm Cooking School.



Wait! That's not the Thai Farm Cooking School. Is what we said when we arrived.

So all of the schools have hotel pickup. When the dude showed up a few minutes early and announced "Cooking school!" we just jumped on. There was no sign, just a nondescript van. Maybe Don't get into nondescript vans. After the market tour, we arrived here, at the Siam Rice cooking school.

Confusion followed, until we finally deduced that someone else at our hotel had made the reservation for this spot, and we probably just switched.

I have no qualms with Siam Rice, but I heard some rad things about Thai Farm, namely that it is on a farm.



Do check out the Wats. There are a bunch within walking distance of Wat Chiang Man. People often complain about becoming watted out fairly quickly, so take your time.



Do save some baht coins to donate, paper bills if you ballin. Ballin! This gold leafed Buddha doesn't pay for itself!



Do get a massage at the women's prison.



Say what? So right in the middle of Chiang Mai is a low security women's correctional facility. Part of the rehabilitation process is to teach them massage. So for about $5 you can get an hour long Thai massage from an inmate.

Traditional Thai massage is mega relaxing. In fact, Do get a massage every freaking day you are in Thailand.



Do get out of Chiang Mai for a minute. Do so on motorcycle. I highly recommend Pai, about 150km north of the city. Tony's Big Bikes is a legit rental service in central Chiang Mai.



I got this Ninja 250 for about $20 a day. Fun bike. The road from Chiang Mai to Pai, Route 1095, is quite well known for it's 762 curves. Most visitors will remember this because they are barfing out of the tour bus window. On a Ninja, it is pure joy.



I'm no expert on the weather, and I'm too lazy to look it up on wikipedia, but maybe Don't go in March.



This is what the views from the mountains look like. The fuck? It looks like there is some sort of forest fire.

Turns out that is exactly correct. Myanmar and the northern area of Thailand straight up burn their farm fields and forests every year. It is kind of nasty. I heard November is the best time to come.



Pai! Pai is kind of a hippie drop-out town. Why? Why would such an area be the go-to for dread-locked European chicks looking to unwind.

Sitting at a bar one night in Pai, and it all made sense. The two dudes next to me were speaking in some strange language. German? Random French dialect? Albanian? Nope, straight up heroin slur.

Pai is part of the infamous Golden Triangle, competing for number one spot in the world opium trade. So, yeah, this is probably a good spot to come and chase the dragon for a few weeks if that is what you are into. Some of the dudes here, it looked more like years.



Internet is everywhere.



As are delicious, healthy restaurants.



Don't buy a dumb ass Pai t-shirt. Seriously, Pai has the world's largest ratio of people to locally branded t-shirts. Is this a thing that hippies buy?



I don't get it!



No more Pai t-shirts!!!!!



Ok, the cloud vomiting a rainbow is kind of cool.



Do, if you have a chance, get out and see the hill tribes of Northern Thailand. From Pai, I took the Ninja 250 up to Mae Hong Son, another mountain town about 100km from Pai, with about triple the number of curves. This road was epic. The route from Chiang Mai to Pai is a little beat up, though still first world standards. Pai to Mae Hong Son is empty, fast, and smooth.

Except for the 5km of off-roading I had to do to get to the longneck's village.





Very cool.



Don't eat street sushi in Thailand. C'mon people!



I've heard Don't eat ground meat of any kind, but nuts to that. Do do do! I later spoke to a chef who learned how to make Chiang Mai sausage from one of the most famous spots in the country. And . . . ummmm . . .  yolo I guess.

Hey, I made a shit map.



Gotta explain the red line.

So I was feeling restless, walking all over town, and rented a bicycle. Figured a burn down along the river would be some good late night exercise. I'm going along, business being all minded to oneself, when out of nowhere comes a wild dog. Scratch that, a pack of fucking rabid wild dogs. Dogs with a taste for white meat.I shift my rusty, 30 baht a day children sized bicycle into top gear and let adrenalin do what it does. For the next what felt like 10 minutes, I'm booking it. Finally, they give up, and a tuk tuk driver pulls up along side me. He had seen the whole thing. High fives were exchanged.

Don't get murdered by dogs in Chiang Mai.



Maybe Don't get a tattoo in Thailand. All the tattoo shops I saw were above bars. It is like that.

By the way, we're now in Bangkok. You mean the place from that one song and that Hangover movie? Yeah, that place.



Don't complain about the weather, don't complain about the weather, don't complain about the weather!

Fuck it! In late March it was 40 degrees.



Maybe Don't go between February and Summer if you aren't a fan of the heat.

Do go to the palace and Wat Pho. And in the palace, Do check out the Queen's silk museum. For some reason, there were a few thousand people outside in the heat, and no on in the excellent air-conditioned museum. It is free, by the way.



Gourmet food. Bangkok has it. I gotta say, Don't go to the Blue Elephant. I was very underwhelmed with this world famous restaurant.



Very normal. The course menu is kind of a mess. They bring out too much at once, and all the flavors get mixed up into a Thai flavor cornucopia.



I'd read that the durian cheesecake was epic, but it wasn't.

If you do go, just order something simple a la carte. But Don't go in the first place.



Nahm, on the other hand. Do go to Nahm.



Chef David Thompson really brings it. Everything here was on another level.



Don't have $80 to spend on dinner?



Cabbages and Condoms was excellent, in both the cuisine and the atmosphere.



Still got some baht in your pocket? Looking for somewhere to spend it? How about . . .



. . . at the movies!



Movies in 4-D (4-D spoken in a booking dramatic voice to make it seem all kinds of epic). 4DX is some only-in-Asia-but-not-Japan thing. Sensory stimulation devices make the movie more real, I guess. The seats are full on Disneyland Star Tours. Plus there are massive wind turbines in the room (it feels like flying!). Plus there are tiny air jets that shoot at you (bullets in your face!). Plus lumbar support shaky things (getting kicked in the back by ninjas!). Plus smoke machines (fire!). Plus flashing lights (epileptic seizures!).

Do try it out, once at least.



Don't see G.I. Joe 2. It suuuuuucks. Actually, I think 4DX only shows one movie at a time, so expect it to be whatever Hollywood blockbuster the kids are into. Fast and the Furious 6, anyone?



Do check out the rooftop bar scene. There are a dozen or so that push past the 50th floor. You'll pay $20 for a drink, but the views are legit.



Cheers Bangkok! It's hot as fuck in March, and I will never come back this time of year, but it was a good time.

If you go to the Lebua Sky Bar, you can have the official Hangover 2 martini. The Hangovertini! How lame is that!



And lastly, Do fly Air Asia. Hella cheap. Bangkok to Tokyo was less than $250. The seats and service are kind of sparse, but just deal with it for a few hours.