Yakitori

Our first night in Tokyo, we happened down a small alley right in the midst of the madness of the Shinjuku neighborhood. The area, affectionately known as "Piss Alley" for some reason, was home to a number of yakitori restaurants.

Yakitori is essentially chicken parts on a skewer, but each restaurant has its own specialties. As we passed the first place, a friendly Canadian and a drunken Japanese man urged us to come in for dinner. We could hardly say no.

It was a great time, conversing with the sake-saturated old man, as he struggled with his English and poured us glasses of his sake (if you look closely, you can kind of see him in the background of the one picture). We really connected on a discussion of Japanese baseball players now in the U.S...he was clearly a big fan of Ichiro.

The food was good, but the bill ($18 a head) was a bit of a shock. It was worth it, though, as a nice introduction to the friendliness of Tokyo.

Later, we wandered down the alley and found a nice little hole-in-the wall drinking establishment with some hip music playing and equally hip Tokyoites manning the bar. It had a funky rooftop with killer views, as seen in the video posted here.