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May 08, 2024
 

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CRAFT

Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NEIGHBORHOOD HOP SPORTS
Jan 27, 2017
Finding craft beer in the shadow of Tokyo's high-rise offices
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 office workers, such as Yaesu, east of Tokyo Station, become ghost towns. However, it isn't long before workers return to their daily grinds — and watering holes. In Yaesu, bars are plentiful, including conventional standing bars and traditional izakaya taverns. But I'm not here for the conventional and traditional; I'm looking for Yaesu's best craft beer bars.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NEIGHBORHOOD HOP SPORTS
Dec 23, 2016
Sugar, spice and all things nice in Roppongi's craft beer bars
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 and nightclubs. Roppongi is a place of often garish contours and contrasts, its visible surface masking secrets at turns mundane and outlandish. There's a place here for anyone and everyone to while away the hours until dawn. And when it comes to craft beer bars, Roppongi does not run short.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Dec 2, 2016
Ohka The Best Days: Craft beer and 'gyoza' keep Nakameguro's old spirit alive
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 you wander far enough from the station; places like Ohka The Best Days.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Nov 27, 2016
Game-winning field goal sends Frontiers to X Bowl
Fujitsu kicker Hidetetsu Nishimura nailed a game-winning 45-yard field goal as time expired to help the Frontiers book a spot in the Japan X Bowl for the fourth consecutive year with a 28-26 win over the IBM Big Blue in the X League playoff semifinals at Fujitsu Stadium Kawasaki on Sunday afternoon.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NEIGHBORHOOD HOP SPORTS
Nov 25, 2016
A journey to the center of Tokyo's crowded craft beer scene
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 feel like a no man's land of offices, banal apartments and elevated train tracks, but it is not without its charms. Off the street, many Tokyoites find refuge in its pachinko parlors, cramped izakaya taverns and, unexpectedly, craft beer bars.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NEIGHBORHOOD HOP SPORTS
Oct 21, 2016
Cozy bars and complex brews on Shibuya's busy backstreets
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 overshadowed by a catalog of American ales that are hard to find in Japan. The bottle menu in particular reads like a beer geek's Christmas list — including brews from Lost Abbey, The Bruery, Founders and AleSmith but, with prices exceeding ¥4,000, I opt for a more reasonable ¥1,200 bottle of Alpha King from Three Floyds in Indiana. This pale ale packs an initial punch with its caramel malts and grapefruit bitterness, but that soon gives way to a minty, astringent finish — delicious. Reaching the bottom of my bottle, I head for somewhere a little cozier.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NEIGHBORHOOD HOP SPORTS
Sep 23, 2016
Craft beer in Shinjuku: Finding gruit and gueze among the glitz and grime
Shinjuku is, in many ways, the center of Japan. It's the seat of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, home to the busiest train station in the world and has been immortalized countless times in film and literature. For many first-timers, a night in this frenetic Tokyo neighborhood means retracing Bill Murray's steps in "Lost in Translation" to drink at the Park Hyatt or exploring gritty microbars in the Golden Gai entertainment district. But in recent years options have expanded: drinking establishments are catering to a newer breed of drinker.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NEIGHBORHOOD HOP SPORTS
Jul 22, 2016
Heady craft beer in Tokyo's 'Little Paris'
French accordion music is floating out from lamp-post speakers as people crowd into the narrow strips of shade on either side of a street in Tokyo's Kagurazaka neighborhood. Long a cultural center, the gentle slope on which the neighborhood now stands once ended at the moat around Edo Castle. Kagurazaka is Tokyo's "Little Paris," with a high concentration of French restaurants, shops and expatriates.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NEIGHBORHOOD HOP SPORTS
Jun 24, 2016
Finding craft beer among the young tribes of Harajuku
Craft beer has come a long way in Tokyo. Twenty years ago, the market was mostly made up of generic lagers produced by major brewers such as Kirin and Asahi. Brewing laws prevented small players from entering the fray, and regulators were skeptical there would be a market for craft beer. Popeye, a bar in eastern Tokyo's Ryogoku neighborhood, was the first to prove them wrong when it began serving Echigo Beer in 1995. Following Popeye's lead, specialty bars began bubbling up all across the city, serving an ever-expanding array of ales and lagers concocted by small-scale breweries across the country and the world.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Jun 14, 2016
IBM Big Blue edge Lixil Deers for Pearl Bowl title
A controversial call cost the Lixil Deers a Pearl Bowl victory and gave the IBM BigBlue a first X League title.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 4, 2016
Beer essentials: The craft beer boom in Japan shows no sign of running dry
Tomoko Sonoda was a college student during the "Dry Wars," the years immediately following the 1987 release of the game-changing light lager Asahi Super Dry. She and her classmates held tasting parties for the spate of new brews that were released by the three other major breweries in an attempt to compete. Together, they tried to discern the different flavors, but there wasn't much to discover. They were all more or less the same: drinkable light lagers, perfect for the Japanese beer market.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
May 20, 2016
Takadanobaba Taproom: Craft beer and deep-fried morsels with a Japanese accent
Great news for craft beer enthusiasts. Just in time for the summer heat, the good folks from Shizuoka's Baird Beer have opened their latest pub in the Takadanobaba neighborhood. It's their third Taproom in Tokyo, after Nakameguro and Harajuku, and sixth in Japan. It could well be the best of the lot so far.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 26, 2016
Young guns take aim at declining sake sales
Sake in Japan is undergoing an image makeover. It's desperately trying to become one of the cool kids again. Currently the second-lowest consumed alcoholic beverage in the country — whiskey and brandy being the lowest — sake only has a 6.8 percent market share according to a National Tax Agency Report in 2013.
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Feb 6, 2016
Craft Sake Week @ Roppongi Hills
A view of Craft Sake Week. The woodwork was made by made by Miyagi Prefecture's Ishinomaki Laboratory. | MONICA IRELANDProduced by soccer superstar Hidetoshi Nakata, Craft Sake Week is a 10-day event at Roppongi Hills that will feature some of the best artisanal sake that Japan offers, which includes a wide spectrum of nihonshu, shochu and umeshu (plum wine). Each day a different theme will be featured, and the selection of beverages and brewers will change.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 5, 2016
Craft beer gets confrontational at the 2016 Japan Brewers Cup
Sake and whiskey might be the international pinups of the Japanese alcohol world, but beer is the local favorite. It is by far the most consumed alcoholic beverage in the country, making up 31 percent of all alcohol consumed yearly in Japan, according to a 2013 report by the National Tax Agency.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 5, 2016
Craft Beer Market Koenji: A refuge for beer lovers with 30 local brews on tap
Sometimes you just want to hunker down somewhere simple. You're not looking for anything cutting-edge or fancy, just a place where the welcome is warm and the food is good, plentiful and satisfying — and ditto the beer. If you're anywhere near the Koenji neighborhood just west of Shinjuku, there is a high probability that Craft Beer Market is the kind of place that you're looking for.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / OBJECT-ORIENTED
Jan 8, 2016
A cast-iron teapot in Tokyo's kitchenware district
About half way along Kappabashi-dori, in the heart of Tokyo's kitchenware district, there's a beautiful shop named Kama Asa that is devoted to the sale of cast ironware. It may come as a surprise to the Western kitchen-goods shopper because in many countries the production of cast iron is all but dead. Though you might find a few pieces in the odd shop, you certainly wouldn't find a store devoted entirely to the craft. The use of cast-iron kitchen goods (despite its known qualities and health benefits) has almost evaporated in Europe, apart from the occasional casserole or frying pan.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Oct 31, 2015
Obic outplays IBM in second-stage opener
Shun Sugawara, making his first start since Sept. 13, completed 19 of 30 passes for 226 yard and a score and Asaki Mochizuki had two rushing touchdowns as the Obic Seagulls beat the IBM BigBlue 34-26 on Saturday at Yokohama Stadium in the second-stage opener of the X League.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KANPAI CULTURE
Sep 11, 2015
Denmark's Mikkeller hits Tokyo, leaves strange brews
Mikkel Borg Bjergso, co-founder of the Danish microbrewery Mikkeller, is a man who likes a challenge. At the opening of the new Mikkeller bar in Shibuya, Bjergso tells me that his next goal is to finish the Berlin Marathon next September in two hours and 45 minutes.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KONBINI WATCH
Sep 11, 2015
Grand Kirin's new IPA is a reminder to put quality before convenience
It was fascinating to watch Japan's major breweries stumble over themselves as they tried to replicate craft beer — but the amusement is starting to wear off. Now, consumers are left with a lot of big-company brews on convenience-store shelves that are mediocre at best. Kirin has been particularly keen to tap into this market, with its Grand Kirin series, but these beers are some of the worst craft beer options on the convenience-store shelf. The new Izayoi no Tsuki Kiwi IPA (¥255) is a step up from the burned flavor of the previous variety, Galaxy Hop IPA, but ultimately tastes like a standard Kirin beer with an aftertaste of warm grape juice. Convenience and affordability are great, but this drink is a reminder that sometimes it's worth going out of your way (and out of pocket) to seek the good stuff.
As visitors surge, Japan seeks ways to make tourism eco-friendly
Much like other hot spots across Okinawa, Onna has diligently strived to captivate both domestic and international tourists, while at the same time grappling with the environmental strain induced by the influx of visitors.
Japan says Biden's description of nation as xenophobic is 'unfortunate'
The National Diet building in Tokyo
Tokuryū, a new crime menace in Japan, emerges from the shadows
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Japan's labor crunch persists despite slight improvement
Over 300 companies went out of business in fiscal 2023 due to labor shortages, according to Teikoku Databank.
Is Modi’s party heading for a stunning election loss?
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign tactics have escalated, including anti-Muslim rhetoric and fearmongering, reflecting his ruling party's desperation.
How a Japanese scientist is turning the climate crisis into music
A screencap of a performance of Hiroto Nagai's “String Quartet No. 1 ‘Polar Energy Budget’” by the PRT Quartet
Japan’s tween skateboarders get head start on preparations for 2028 Olympics
Ibuki Matsumoto competes at an event in Osaka on April 21.
Pentagon reveals drone types for Replicator program to counter China
A U.S. Naval Special Warfare Operator fires a Switchblade 300 loitering munition during training exercises in Fallon, Nevada, last July. The U.S. Defense Department plans to use small drones — known in the Pentagon as “all-domain attritable autonomous systems” — to help counter Chinese military systems and tactics.
As visitors surge, Japan seeks ways to make tourism eco-friendly
Much like other hot spots across Okinawa, Onna has diligently strived to captivate both domestic and international tourists, while at the same time grappling with the environmental strain induced by the influx of visitors.
Kishida talks up bolstered Latin American ties as China cements position
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida holds a news conference in Sao Paulo on Saturday.

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