Bill Cooney

遅れちゃった！There goes my aim to be nice and consistent with the blogging this year – I arrived back in Australia just over a week ago and went straight back to work on Monday, so I’ve been dealing with an inbox full of anxious clients and gearing up for another fun year of event production.

In an effort to absolve myself of any guilt I feel about my lack of posting in the past week, I’m gonna tell you about my favourite (non-cosplay) bar. Kuidokoro Bar Toki in Akihabara has some of the most delicious, evil food on their menu. Oh, and they have Evangelion, Gundam and Kamen Rider themed cocktails. There’s lots of photos in this one – click on any photo to enlarge.

I first found this bar with a friend of mine. He was one of the lucky few of us who managed a jump from English teaching to a full-time real job, as an IT manager for a global investment behemoth. Of course with his fat bank account and Azabu lifestyle, it was only a matter of time before he required something with which to display his wealth – he decided on a big fuck-off LCD monitor.

So we journeyed to Akihabara and after an afternoon of looking at monitors in the flesh (so he could go home and order one off Kakaku.com), we decided it was time for beer and food. A little bit of hunting around near Akihabara Station yielded a yakitori place. It was full, so we ended up going to the place next door, which turned out to be Toki.

Suntory Malts on tap and a menu with such decadant abominations as deep-fried stick cheese won us over immediately. We also discovered the miyazaki-jidori-amiyaki (Miyazaki Broiled Free-Range Chicken) – a broiled chicken breast with the skin left on and generously seasoned with salt and pepper.

Deep-fried stick cheese

They’ve also got a fantastic niku-gushi menu (that’s grilled-meat-on-stick) with a bacon theme – cherry tomato wrapped in bacon, mochi wrapped in bacon and the heart-attack-bringer : cheese wrapped in bacon. The deliciousness is unbelievable, however beware – don’t live on a diet of this stuff without plenty of rice or other fiber. Otherwise you’ll be in severe tummy-trouble, and if you’re conventioning then your only recourse will be the squat toilet port-a-potties in line at Big Sight. Not pretty.

Cherry Tomato & Bacon, Mochi & Bacon and miyazaki-jidori-amiyaki

Cheese Wrapped in Bacon – Listen to your heart “NOOOOOOOOOOOARRGHHHH!HH!H!!”

We would have returned again for the food, but a trip to the bathroom revealed what was to become my favourite thing about Toki – the themed cocktails.

There are themed bars in Akihabara like Zeon and LittleBSD, but sometimes you want something a little more… adult. But playful. And something – I dunno, I’m pretty hammered (yay duty free!). But!

I saw a poster in the bathroom about their themed cocktails and after relieving myself and returning to my table, immediately summoned the waitress and ordered one each of the Evangelion-themed cocktails. At ¥650 each, they’re not pricey and there’s one for each of the main Evangelion units and (if you want to get really deep into it) the flavours are reflective of the personalities of the pilots.

Or maybe that’s what you think after you’ve drunk 3 cocktails in a short period of time after knocking back a few beers.

They’re called Sapphire, Amethyst and Ruby and each corresponds (in order) to Unit-0 (Rei), Unit-1 (Shinji) and Unit-2 (Asuka), with the color resembling the Evangelion and the taste being representative of the pilot. I assume. The theory was postulated during a visit to Toki with the guys from Clockwork Machina that the cocktails were inspired by the sweat wrung out from plugsuits, but that’s just nasty.

Ruby, Sapphire & Amtheyst Eva Cocktails with the menu

Sapphire is made from blue curucao and ramune, so it’s kind of sweet without really being sweet and you kind of can’t really tell you’re drinking anything – just like a soulless Rei with no motivation to do anything.

Amethyst is made from cassis, calpis and a green maracino cherry. They colors match Shinji’s Eva and the drink is made up of the girliest liquers ever conceived, which is fitting considering that Shinji is the prototypical bitch for all bitches in every anime since Evangelion was released. It tastes pleasant enough, although the experience is deeply emasculating. You know that if you drink enough of them, there’s a good chance you’ll end up being the bottom for some sleazy dude named Kaoru who will mysteriously appear next to you after you miss the last train home and offer to put you up for the night.

Ruby is bright pinky-red and made with a watermelon flavoured liquer called “X-Rated”, sours and soda water. It’s topped off with a red maracino cherry. The color matches well enough and the sweet, yet slightly sour drink represents Asuka’s role as the tsundere perfectly. Plus you can make endless jokes about busting Asuka’s cherry as you eat the garnish.

That’s what they should put on alcohol awareness campaigns : drinking to excess makes you joke like an unfunny uncle at a distant relative’s wedding after 16 scotch and cokes, only even more retarded and stupid. And still unfunny.

In addition to the Evangelion cocktails there’s the Kamen Rider which is constructed from apple liquer and ice cream with half-cherries for eyes, and a whole host of Gundam cocktails which CMWilly assured me actually mean something (I’m the first to admit I don’t know anything about Gundam – I use the portion of my brain reserved for Gundamn fandom to remember all the event flag dates for Kanon and Clannad) and he appeared to enjoy the aoi-kyousei he ordered (shochu and ramune).

Toki is right across from Akihabara station, and there’s no reason not to check it out if you’re in town. Please bear in mind that there is no English menu and you will need at least functional katakana and Japanese to order the basic stuff, and some nifty kanji skills to order more things.

Links

• Kuidokoro Bar Toki at Gurunavi (Japanese Only)
• Location on Google Maps