Kagaya

Kyle McAuliffe — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:58:37 +0000

So i finally went to Kagaya in Shimbashi, and i am speechless. While using Stumble Upon about 2 months ago i stumbled upon this page: http://gaijintonic.com/2007/02/08/kagaya-maddest-bar-in-tokyo/ . It looked very interesting and i told myself that i needed to go sometime. Well time past and i found myself looking for something to do one weekend. I had already talked to Cheung, and called him again to see if he wanted to go out for dinner and drinks.

We went to a Mexican place in Shimbashi for dinner, and then headed over to Kagaya’s. It is a small place in the B1 floor of a building. Once you walk in it looks like a bare Japanese diner with not much going on for it. He greeted us and showed us our table then disappeared into the back. Moments later we heard him humming the Dark Side theme from Star Wars. A little bit after this began a robot popped out of the back room with Mark following. He continued to hum the music while the robot brought us our hot towels to clean our hands with.

The rest of the night followed suit. After an incredibly interesting display of the drink menu, we were told to choose a drink and a country (from one of the ones listed). We chose a beer each, from France. Mark appeared about a minute later with old french music playing in the background.

French Mark getting ready to painting me

Mark continued to paint a picture of me, and then served us our drinks. Cheung’s which vibrated violently every time he lifted it, and mine which made a frog sound every time i set it down. The girls at the table in front of us were getting a good laugh out of this, as were we. They seemed to be friends of Marks since none of his silly antics applied to them, and he even brought them a birthday cake and pulled out a guitar to sing happy birthday to them.

As the night progressed, the events continued to get weirder. I dont want to ruin it for anyone who is planning to go so i’ll leave it at that and some pictures. If you want to visit Mark and his establishment (which i highly recommend) you can find a map drawn by him here http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~kagayayy/newpage3.html

As childish as it looks, it is actually a great rendering of the area, and makes it very easy to locate!

The search for Killians

Kyle McAuliffe — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:38:10 +0000

So it’s been over 5 months that i’ve been in Japan. I know your thinking, well thats not that long. And while that may be true, i’ve been without my favorite beer for that long.

So i decided to go on a hunt for some george killians irish red here in japan. my search brought me to tanakaya in mejiro which is known as being one of the stores with the most foreign beer stock. While they didn’t have killians, i tried 5 amber ales to find something that was close.

Below is an account of my finds.

first up was pike pale heirloom amber ale.

pike ale

it’s ok, your average amber ale. no where near killians, but a decent beer. i’ll have to wait until i try the other ones before i can say safely that i wouldn’t get this one again.

next up we had red rocket ale.

red rocket ale

A very bold beer. Has some character to it. A good beer that i would buy again, but still not what im looking for =\.

third up we had balast point calico amber ale

calico amber ale

A bit like the pike ale, but i would rate it a little higher on my scale. A little bitter, but it helps to give it flavor.

following this we have the rose red amber ale.

red rose amber ale

i believe that his beer is made in japan. it tastes a lot like the pike pale, but with subtle differences. it is decent, but not really what i am looking for. i guess in a few words i would say it is an average amber ale but with japanese influences.

lastly was the satan red.

satan red

now before i go on to review this, let me tell you a little story about this devil (get it?). so i’ve finished my 4 other beers and have one left. I take it out of my fridge and take out my bottle opener to open it. I start to open it and… *SNAP* my bottle opener shatters. At this point my mind goes back to college tricks on how to open bottled beer. I put the end on a sharp surface and smack it with my palm… nothing, just foam fizzing out as if to laugh at me. i try this on several surfaces and end up bruising my palm.

in the end it took skillful pries with a spoon to finally open it. go figure that this thing had a devil pointing and laughing at me the whole time. alas, in the end it was worth it. this is the closest i have found to killians thus far and forgetting the whole fiasco i went through to open it, was the best beer of the five. when i go back to buy some more to sample i will be sure to pick up one or two of these!

Kyle McAuliffe's Personal Site » Beer

Kagaya

The search for Killians