The restaurant Tokyo time
As the Rugby World Cup heats up, all eyes are on the Japanese capital. Here’s your essential guide. By Amelia Lester.
Japan’s diverse natural environment is tailor-made for farm-to-table cuisine but vegetable-centric restaurants are still relatively rare. The co-owners of Blind Donkey (theblinddonkey.jp) spent a year travelling Japan, establishing relationships with farmers of persimmons in Yokosuka and of tomatoes in Okinawa. The resulting five-course tasting menu, paired with mostly natural wines, is colourful and simple, a beacon of light among the smoky izakayas of Tokyo’s CBD.
The coffee
A 15-kilogram Diedrich Roaster works overtime at Onibus Coffee (onibuscoffee.com) in the charming neighbourhood of Nakameguro. The house speciality is pour-over, the latte art impressive and the interior, with its handmade tiles and murals by local artists, is equally instagrammable. Food is limited but the croissants are outrageously flaky, best enjoyed in the tiny garden with its soundtrack of riotous birdsong.
The bars
Japan is famous for karaoke but an alternative trend is quite different: listening bars that play music on vinyl while you stay very quiet and sip a cocktail. Bar Martha (martharecords.com) spent more than $400,000 on its speaker system and favours the classics. Bob Dylan never sounded better than when paired with a meticulously made Manhattan and the bar’s addictive spiced-nut mix. If you’re looking for a spot with a view, you can’t go past the New York Bar at the Park Hyatt Tokyo (hyatt.com). A staple of the city for 25 years, it never gets old. The opulent interior, made famous by Lost in Translation, is beguiling and live jazz every evening sets the tone as you gaze out at the glimmering lights 52 floors below.
The sushi
The birthplace of sushi, Tokyo offers a mind-boggling array of places to sample the national cuisine but Sushi Dai (Level 3, Building 6, Toyosu Market, 6-5-1 Toyosu, Kōtō-ku; +81 3 6633 0042) is an economical choice. You won’t find a better sushi breakfast under ¥5000 ($69). And yes, morning is the time to go. Most days, with a queue snaking around the block, the restaurant closes its waiting list to new customers at about 11am.
The museum
The Nezu Museum (nezu-muse. or.jp) houses an extensive collection of pre-modern Asian art. But its most memorable display is outside the building. Follow the steep stone path through a traditional garden, over a bridge and past a koi pond and you’ll find four pavilions devoted to the tea ceremony, including one specifically designed to showcase the purple foliage of the Japanese maple in spring.
And if you’re taking the kids
Animation company Studio Ghibli is famous for its spellbinding tales of magic and mythology. The Ghibli Museum (ghibli-museum.jp) is a fittingly whimsical tribute to movies like Spirited Away but it’s worth a visit when you have kids to entertain, even if you haven’t seen the films. The exhibitions are an interactive maze of fuzzy creatures and kooky surprises, such as the cat-shaped bus for children to clamber through.