First night in Tokyo for Tim and Brian...

Two friends from back home decided to take advantage of the fact that I was in Japan to come visit Tokyo. Luckily my meager Japanese skills were enough to see us through.

First night we kept it simple and just walked around Shinjuku a bit. We ended up in The Hub, which is a chain of English-type pubs. Since jet lag did not appear to be a problem we stayed until about 2:30am and I ended up taking a taxi home. Probably one of my drunker nights in Tokyo, and long overdue.

The next day we decided to have them come up to my neck of the woods to try some really good ramen (sorry, get ready for a brief food porn interlude.)

The place we go to, Ipputo, serves Kyushu-style ramen two ways. One is with shoyu (soy sauce:)


























And one is without:















You can also order the ramen with two slices of pork, or with six. Why you would not pay 200 yen for the extra four slices of pork is beyond me.

They boys agreed, this is not anything like instant ramen. These shops usually either make their noodles themselves every day or buy them from a supplier who makes them daily.

We then headed off to a local English Pub, The Fiddler, to verify for Brian that a good pint of Guinness can indeed be had in Tokyo (though it will set you back Y900.)

We were about the only people in the bar so the Balinese guitarist who was playing that night pretty much played whatever we wanted.















He eventually called Tim up on stage to accompany him on All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan-style.)















And just to show that we did indeed find an acceptable pint: