Dream Theatre

Pub Cardinal Marunochi

The Pub Cardinal Marunochi is located in the Tokyo Building not so far away from Tokyo Station. Its the latest step of a concerted effort on the part of developers to restore some of the night life to this part of Tokyo. If you're not familiar with the Marunochi district, its pretty much a concrete block of wide streets and skyscrapers, and up to now, has been an extremely dull work orientated area and is rarely on my list of places to go drinking in.
PCM opened about a month or so ago and is organised by the same group who run Heartland in Roppongi Hills, a place I've been known to frequent not a few times a week. Urged by my friend to check it out we went along there last night.

One thing that strikes you about the place is how they've gone to town in its interior design, the bar is essentially split into three areas.

The sit down area retains some of the Ginza/Taisho era sophistication, with European style wood panelling and over hanging chandiliers. They offer a reasonably varied menu of pastas, curries and general snack food of decent quality, at inexpensive prices. I had a Keema curry for a 1000¥, my friend went for their mini burger set and fries. A varied drinks menu of liquors and wines is of course supported by the famous 500¥ Hearland beer which is my drink of choice in their establishments.

The stand up bar area is much smaller than Hearland, but pretty much is very similiar in look and feel. The third area is perhaps the most innovative part of the bar; you see its out doors, yes, there has been a deliberate and organised attempt to install a fully functional outside bar area to take advantage of the fact that you can drink outside in Tokyo pretty much 9 months of the year. Something which is endemic in Heartland but choatic when everyone decides to go outside. Here there are well designed bar and seating areas in attempt to make the experience less like a hot day in the Shopping mall.

On the whole my friend and I were pretty much impressed by the planning gone into the bar, although we found the seating area perhaps a tad too restrictive for actual mingling. The crowd is about as different as you can get from Heartland which is predominately a foreign hang out, last night PCM was pretty much a Japanese crowd of businessmen and OLs, but maintains a friendly manner thanks to the efforts of the director of the place Shimada-san who originally set up Hearland when it first opened.

Bonenkai Party

In Japan the infamous Office party is known as Bonenkai, which literally means 'forget the year party'. Its a time, where as you can imagine, everyone goes out, parties with their office associates and spend the rest of the holiday season trying to either forget the horrible hangover caused by too much japanese sake or the lingering memories of drunken obnoxious acts, lets face it we're all guilty of that at some point. Actually is amazing how many of these Bonenkais people attend, on average according to an article I read, it can be anything from 3 up to ten. It certainly explained while there were so many tired students in saturday classes this week.

Anyhow I went to a party on saturday which I personally thought was a cut above any on the office parties I've been to in England, seen The Office version of a Xmas party? If you're not English let me assure you its all true. This party was held in Akasaka at a restaurant called Shunju which is located on the twenty seventh floor of some building whose name I can't remember, it has a terrific view of central Tokyo, and was a great location for the event. The event is known as The West Coast Party night. I went there with Pat from Lost in Translation Weblog. It was a really cool event and had around 400 party goers there. Below is snap taken by Pat at the party, as you can see Pat's new camera is definetly improving my complexion, we tried doing this shot with my supposedly cool Contax camera, all we got was a shot that made us look like we had anemia.

Trader Vic's Meikai Xmas Party

On Sunday I attended my University teacher's Christmas lunch which was held at the Trader Vic's in the New Otani Hotel.  The restaurant itself is very atmospheric, especially for the Christmas season. They serve a buffet and carvery brunch from 11.30 to 2.30. The food is South Pacific cuisine with a wide variety of Asian and fusion styles to suit all tastes. The carvery is definitely the hightlight for me with my insatiable desire for good quality meat, with an excellent selection of beef, chicken and pork. As well they serve sparkling wine of reasonable quality for the entire brunch, which is nicely rounded off with a final trip to a fairly wide selection of desserts which is apparently the highlight of the meal if you happen to female. The link below will take you to website for more details. If you have the all you can drink menu then it costs 6000 yen per person otherwise its 3000 yen.

Trader Vic's website

Fantasy to Reality Part 1

Jessica Alba is undisputably one of the hottest actresses of the last year, I challenge anyone to disagree with me. She's been in a few duff movies this year ie Fantastic Four, I haven't seen it yet, but you do have to question the wisdom of a movie that makes its most sellable asset invisible. Anyhow she's also been in one of the best movies of the year, Sin City, a post feminist examination of urban society, directed by the introspective artist Roger Rodrigeuz. So what has this got to do with food and drink? Well, someone in all their wisdom has opened up The Sin City bar in Aoyama, see photo. This is a temporary establishment that is filling the void that Orbient left after its contract expired. The interior has been redressed with a Sin City theme, including a dressing room area filled with fetish gear, downstairs there is a Sin City style dance stage which sadly neither I or Pat got to see. If you're in the area check it out.