Reid Main

Thankfully they had turned the power back on to the Tokyo Portcity Takeshiba building so we were able to grab some Blue Bottle coffee from our regular spot before starting the day. The only concrete plans we had were to meet a Japanese co-worker in Ikebukuro at 5pm so we had plenty of time and decided to line up for some of our favourite food.

I have written about my love for this particular ramen shop before but Kikanbo is a place that I will return to every time I visit Tokyo. We queued up at their Akihabara location around 10:30am and were third and fourth in line for the 11am opening. Getting there early is highly recommend because during regular business hours you'll usually find the line reaching 20-30 people which it easily did in the 30 minutes we were standing around.

Kikanbo is one of those small ramen shops that only sits like 10 people and you're all at the counter. You purchase tickets from a machine for your meal ahead of time and present them to the server as you enter. What makes Kikanbo so great is that they do not hold back when it comes to spiciness. You're able to chose the level of chilli peppers for raw heat and sansho peppers for a tingly, numbing effect. This was the first time I ever got the highest level for both, colloquially referred to as "oni level". Maxing out the chilli peppers is always a good idea in my book as it imparts a fantastic flavour to the broth. But oni level for the sansho peppers absolutely kicked my ass. The numbing sensation that it caused was beyond anything I had ever experienced before. And the downside of getting oni level for both is since they do not skimp on the amount of spice your broth ends up being completely saturated with it. I pride myself at drinking all of the broth for my ramen but this time it was complete agony. When we undoubtedly return to Kikanbo I will make sure to only get oni level for the chilli peppers and either low or none for the sansho peppers.

I won't bore you with the details but we returned to Ikebukuro and did some more shopping to finish getting gifts for our friends and family back home. After winning some of those gifts in crane games it was fast approaching 5pm so we headed towards the department store where we were meeting our friend. This person has lived in Japan for years and had heard about an exhibition showcasing all sorts of things from the Shōwa era, the years from 1926 to 1989 under the reign of Emperor Hirohito.

https://twitter.com/statuses/1922645877077753857

What is so bizarre, at least to a westerner like myself, is that the exhibition was held on the 8th floor of a department store. Just imagine you're taking an escalator up through all the floors of any big name department store seeing menswear, cosmetics, jewellery, appliances, and then suddenly you stumble across what looks to be a garage sale of items from 50+ years ago. And to be fair because the Japanese typically take very good care of their possessions basically everything was in pristine condition. Also, for some reason at the very end of the floor was a model maker, Sayoko Kumada, who all sorts of beautiful dioramas on display.

After we had absorbed enough culture from before we were born we made our way to Shibuya for some food and drinks. We started out at EXBAR which had a really novel system for dispensing beer. You fill up a card with money and then touch it to whichever draft tap you'd like a drink from. You get charged down to the millilitre so you can drink as much or as little as you'd like. Afterwards we hit up a tiny bar called 8bit Cafe that had an assortment of drinks all inspired by classic video games. We sat around drinking until 11pm and even the bar owner came over and started chatting. Saying "us" is being a bit too generous as it was our friend who acted as our translator but it was still an fantastic time.