Now that summer has been blown away, we finally have the appetite not just to eat but to venture further afield. Time to head across the Sumida River into the shitamachi (old downtown) heartland of Ryogoku, home to the national cult of sumo and its central shrine, the mighty Kokugikan stadium.
But it's not the season yet for chanko nabe, the belly-filling hot-pot of the wrestlers. Instead, we are in search of soba, the buckwheat noodles that have nourished this city for centuries, since long before its name changed from Edo to Tokyo. And no one makes them better in this neighborhood than Tadashi Hosokawa.
His eponymous restaurant stands just a minute's walk from the Edo-Tokyo Museum, but the overarching ugliness of that building's massive facade is thankfully shielded from sight by the time you reach the doorway. From the wide, low noren curtain of handspun white linen and the bank of shrubbery that conceals the window, you know before you even enter that Hosokawa serves his soba well dipped in refinement.