Sean Roe invited me out to this place ages ago. "￥380 a beer," he said. Very hard to resist. So I went. And here's what I found: Kanso is a bar, and an art installation combined. Its concept can be roughly summarized as drink x cans = fun The art here is nothing precious, consisting as it does of cans. Big cans that you sit at like tables and walls of cans to dazzle … [Read more...] about Kanso
Bars
Yoramu
Last Thursday Nick Coldicott, was in town and invited me out to sake bar Yoramu. Nick is the editor of Time Out Shortlist Kyoto and also writes a drinks column for the Japan Times, so when he said that Yoramu was his favorite bar, I was naturally intrigued. Yoramu lived up to his promise. The master, Yoram, a quietly spoken Israeli perfectly fluent in English and Japanese, … [Read more...] about Yoramu
Blue Note
A couple of weeks ago, jazz singer Allison Adams Tucker invited me to Blue Note to see her live performance there. It was a great show but also an excellent opportunity to check out this legendary live music venue. I spoke to the current master Ohigashi-san. A mild-mannered chap, he goes by the nickname of Chooper-san (after blues musician Al Kooper), and is as Allison put it … [Read more...] about Blue Note
Kiyamachi Bar Crawl
Update 2025: Back in 2009, accompanied by my old drinking buddy David Ewen, I set out to explore some of the bar culture in the Kiyamachi area armed with my copy of 京都穴BAR (a Japanese pocket guide to Kyoto's hole-in-the-wall bars). In one evening we visited eight bars, of which, sad to say, 16 years later, just three remain. My original reviews of those three bars are posted … [Read more...] about Kiyamachi Bar Crawl
antighseinnse
There's a Scottish pub in north Kyoto named antighseinnse (a.k.a. Horie's Bar). The name (pronounced "an ti shayn jay" I think) is Gaelic and means simply "Inn". The owner Toshiyuki Horie named it after a favored pub on the isle of Islay in Scotland and still proudly wears a T-shirt celebrating "The best pub in Portnahaven". Horie-san, a self-described whisky otaku or … [Read more...] about antighseinnse
