Tokyo Nightlife

I often read ridiculous things in Tokyo guidebooks about how bars, restaurants and shops change over so quickly. I thought it was an exaggeration. One of our favourite places around the Tokyo station area is the New Maronouchi Building or “Shin Maru Biru” to locals. It took a while to find as Tokyo station has dozens exits, but it is worth hunting down as there are some seriously chic restaurants, not to mention 2 of my fave shops - Banana Republic and Molton Brown. We had dinner had a trendy Italian place and then went a place called Bar 120 afterwards. We were lured in by the sounds of Elvis and didn’t realize until we had ordered a drink that we had become part of the music-art-installation. On the wall were displayed about a hundred album covers representing the best of Western rock dating from the 1950s up until the birth of the CD. We were part of the installation as we were invited to choose one of the albums to play. What would you have gone with? Led Zeppelin? Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars? Blondie? U2? Simon and Garfunkle? The Beachboys? The Beatles? Supertramp? We chose The Clash (written as The Crash on the pamphlet, but we knew what they meant….). Being in Bar 120 was like being at a friend’s house and flicking through his (let’s face it, it would be a guy) albums. I’d love to go back, but being Tokyo this place will only exist for another week. Akiko, our musician waitress, told us that the new exhibition/bar will be something to do with Sinatra. We’ll be back.