About food in Japan

Bar Marche Kodama, a big but reasonable breakfast inside Shinagawa train station

JR Shinagawa station has one of the largest and the first full-fledged "eki-naka" (inside-station) commercial zone in Tokyo. The group of commercial facilities called "ecute Shinagawa" by JR East opened in 2005 and even after that it has been developped as expantion in 2011 and renovated the older area in late 2012.

Bar Marche Kodama is one of the newest units opened in a part of ecute Shinagawa in 2012. Kodama is originally a food processing company introducing processed meat products such as sausages, ham and bacon from Europe to Japan. At several locations, the company offers Italian and Spanish restaurants also in order to introduce their processed or imported products with nice wine or beer. Bar Marche Kodama is one of such unit where we can enjoy meat processed food of European style but inside one of the biggest terminal train station, JR Shinagawa, in Tokyo. A glass of wine or beer will be good to make you chill out on the way between your workplace and home, taking a rest and released from packed commute trains for a while during rush hour.

Another fantastic way to visit Bar Marche Kodama is breakfast time. From its opening at 8a.m. to 11a.m. the bar offers breakfast buffet at Yen600. It costs a bit more than breakfast set at fastfood restaurants such as McDonald or coffee shop chains like Starbucks. But the buffet breakfast is still much less expensive compared with the prices for buffet breakfast at many hotels. 

Well, what are provided for the buffet breakfast?

Sausages, meal pate, bacon, all are Kodama's products

olives, pickles, salad, a few diffrent kinds of bread,

minestrone soup with Kodama's bacon

The buffet also includes quiche, coffee and tea of course.  

 

 

When the weather is fine, take a table on outside terrace,

if you do not mind being in a smoking allowed zone.

 Stay away from hectic real world that can be

looked over the glass window or over the bar counter. 

Further more, Bar Marche Kodama provides alcohol drinks even from the morning hours. Of course it is out of buffet menu though. If your day-time schedule allows you, it will be the best beginning of a day to have the big buffet breakfast with a glass of beer or wine. 

 

After the fantastic breakfast hours until 11a.m., the station bar still opens until 22h on evening without a break. 

 

Restaurant name: Bar Marche Kodama

Address: ecute Shinagawa, 3-26-27 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo

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Discover life of Japanese in good old days at Open Air Architectural Museum

We found an interesting spot that must be attractive for those who are interested in Japanese food and culture behind it. It is called "Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum" (江戸東京たてもの園) and it is a branch of Edo Tokyo Museum (江戸東京博物館) in Ryogoku.

Edo-Tokyo Open Air Museum is located on the outskirts of Tokyo. It might not be easy to access for non-Japanese speakers because of a bit complicated local public transportation. We still believe that, for non-Japanese tourists who are interested in discovering Japanese traditional life and culture including food, it is worth visiting and taking a half or one day there.

The open air museum operated by Tokyo Metropolitan government conserves buildings that had been used as a house, shop or for other purposes and also are considered important from the view of history and as culture heritage of Tokyo, Japan. It shows them to public as an open air museum on the land of 7ha area. 

Before going into deep of the museum, one advice we can give you.

To visit the museum, be ready to take your shoes off!! as same with modern ordinary private houses in Japan, it is required. 

What to see: For food lovers traveling in Japan, not-to-miss spots are followings. They are mainly situated in East Zone wherer traditional commercial buildings of 19th to early 20th centries are demonstrated in a row like a shopping archade.

Izakaya bar (called Kagiya 鍵屋)

 

Grocery store (Kambutsuya 乾物屋)

 

Aramonoya (荒物屋)

It is a shop selling hardware closely related in daily life such as cooking, cleaning, washing.

  

 

The open air museum sometimes shows "behind the scene", demonstrating pieces of real life at the time. One example is this tiny table (chabu-dai) with a tea set. 

 

 

When the weather is not too hot,

you will find Irori (囲炉裏, fire place) in a few of farmer's houses.

Rare to find it especially in Tokyo.

 

 

Apart from food and gastronomic fields, we can find some other interesting spots such as a perfect-look of public bath (not for taking but for looking at the archtecture and decoration) which is said to be one of models for "Aburaya" depicted in "Sprited Away"(「千と千尋の神隠し」), the award-winning animation movie by director Hayao Miyazaki. 

  

 

 

Where to have lunch: Two food & beverage facilities are in the museum. One is tea room in Western style building and another one is Udon noodle shop named "Kura (蔵)" accommodated on the upper floor of a Kura (蔵, storehouse) style buidling.

The Udon noodle shop offers several types of udon noodle dishes in local Musashino region style which includes some vegetables. This is Musashino Tsuke-jiru Udon (武蔵野つけ汁うどん, Udon with dipping sauce in Musashino style). 

To enjoy Udon noodle at the restaurant Kura, first purchase a ticket from a vending machine at the restaurant's entrance, selecting your order. Take a table and pass your ticket to a staff. It is casual style dining at resonable prices because of the museum run by Tokyo local government. But the taste of noodle is not as much as simple like the serving style.

 

How to go: There are several ways to access to the museum by public transportation from central Tokyo. We think this is the easiest way.

Take JR Chuo line from Tokyo or Shinjuku towards Tachikawa and/or Hachioji direction from East to West.

Get off at Musashi Koganei (武蔵小金井) station and go out from North Exit for the bus stop No.2 or No.3 (both operated by Seibu Bus) which are facing to the station. Take a bus from either bus stop to "Koganei Koen Nishi-guchi " (Koganei Park West gate).  It will take around 5 minutes.

Walk down through the large Koganei Park which is just in front of the bus stop, following sing boards of "Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum (江戸東京たてもの園)". You will find the building of its visitor center with large black tiled roof in mid of the greenery Koganei Park.

To help you more, please also check the map and direction explained in English by the museum from here.

Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum is also described well in general, not specific for foodies, by Around Tokyo. Please visit the page from here. 

 

Name of place: Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum (江戸東京たてもの園)

Address: 3-7-1 Sakuramachi, Koganei-city, Tokyo 

Official homepage: http://tatemonoen.jp

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