As you slide open the door and enter, a chorus of yells assails your ears, echoing around the room. Before you are even seated, there will be more shouts and responses unleashed by the same bevy of full-throated floor staff. And then again when you order that first drink. And so on all evening. Welcome to Inakaya -- if you're hoping for a quiet night out, you'd better leave now.
Everything feels larger than life here. The waiters dress in dark indigo yukata, their sleeves tied back with bright red cords and hachimaki bands tightly wound around their brows. The handwritten menu posted across the back wall looks like a calligraphy display. And so much of the floor space is taken up by the massive counter, with its groaning cornucopia of food, that you almost have to edge sideways around the periphery of the room to reach your seat.
Inakaya calls itself a robatayaki, a country-style grill, but it's not so much a restaurant as an interactive theater where you get to participate in the show by eating and drinking. The lead roles in this drama are the two yakikata ("grill-persons" is the literal translation), whose names are identified on wooden plaques somewhat in the manner of sumo wrestlers. Kneeling on their haunches in the center of the room, they cook your order, arrange it on plates and then thrust it across that wide counter to where you are sitting, using sturdy wooden paddles a couple of meters long.