Everybody likes a happy ending, especially when the story involves one of Tokyo's most popular pubs. That's why many cheered when Mikkeller Tokyo announced its return this spring. A year after calling it quits in Shibuya's Udagawacho district, the Danish-based craft beer bar has reincarnated. ...
Another month, another new craft beer bar throws open its doors in Tokyo. The spread of microbrewed saisons, porters and hopped-up IPAs is inexorable and highly welcome — especially when the venue is as attractive and welcoming as Another8. Instead of following the standard American ...
Behind the usual assortment of fresh produce and their derivative goods at the UNU Farmers' Market in Aoyama last weekend, Tokyo Beer Week 2017, which runs through June 11, was quietly kicking off by offering nearly four dozen taps of craft beer from in ...
Whither craft beer? Possibly on convenience store shelves, though in small numbers. The last two years saw the big konbini players make significant space for artisanal suds, whether from actual craft breweries (in some cases owned by large octopus-like conglomerates) or attempts by major brands. Yet ...
A newspaper and a pub chain walk into a brewery... It has all the makings of a joke, but this is no wisecrack —it's the story of how The Japan Times, Kyoto Brewing and the Brussels bar chain came together to make a truly newsworthy ...
Often touted as Tokyo's apex of cool, Koenji is a maze of narrow mixed-use streets, where the city's trendsetters, en route to hip cafes, cross paths with pensioners browsing cheap vegetables and various knickknacks. Koenji is a neighborhood that seemingly has it all, or at ...
A businessman in Tochigi Prefecture is showing how anyone can enter the microbrewery market and make a wide variety of flavored beers in very small amounts, something made possible under tax law deregulation. Sadao Yokosuka, 51, operates a tiny brewery in Utsunomiya, where a 70-centimeter-high ...
For the first few days of each year, Tokyo is relatively quiet. Businesses are shuttered for the New Year's holiday, and many of the city's inhabitants retreat to family homes in the countryside to unwind with loved ones. Neighborhoods that are typically crowded with ...
Depending on who you ask, Roppongi is either Tokyo's most sophisticated neighborhood or its seediest. Yet everyone can agree it's one of the city's most international. Each night, expats, emigres and immigrants wend their way through a landscape of restaurants, hostess bars, art galleries ...
It's getting hard to remember the days when "Nakame" — the local nickname for Naka-Meguro — was funky and alternative, before the river got cleaned up and gentrification set in. But there are still pockets of the old neighborhood vibe to be found if ...
It may be located in the center of Tokyo but people always seem to be passing through Kanda on their way to someplace else: north to Akihabara, east to Asakusa, south to Tokyo Station or west to the Imperial Palace. This liminal neighborhood can ...
A short distance from Shibuya's madding crowds is Craftheads, a veteran bar in Tokyo's craft beer scene. I drift into this basement bar, grab a seat and reach for the menu before the masses arrive. I find a short roster of stalwart Japanese beers ...
