In order not to forget: in 2005 I stayed at the Ryokan “Choyokan Honke” (choh-yoh-kahn hong-keh) in Tokyo, close to the Tokyo Dome and the Korakuen park.  I wrote about it in my Nihon News 14, back before I wrote a blog:

“By the time Lukas Howald and I reached the Choyokan Honke, our ryokan for the first two nights, my arm was sore from pulling my suitcase around Tokyo, but the sprawling two-story tiled inn amidst highrises made up for the effort.  In order to ward off sleep, we headed to the Tokyo Dome city nearby and ate yakitori (grilled meat on a small bamboo spear) and oden (cooked – uh, stuff).  The yakitori guy was a young whippersnapper drinking coke he’d bought at the neighboring KFC, the oden vendor an aging smoker drinking his own sake to keep warm.  During the whole meal, traffic raced by and two men competed for the attention of passersby with their megaphones.  We returned via a restaurant where we had tea and dessert and spent the rest of the afternoon resting.  For dinner, we bypassed the establishment advertising “Coffee & Booze” and entered the Takanoya, where the staff seemed to have fun trying to explain the menu to us.  I ended up with a fish head and a potato salad and ordered a glass of Nigorishu at the end of the meal, a type of sake with leftover rice particles floating within, giving it a strong, earthy, almost bitter flavor.  They served it in a slender glass they filled until it overflowed into the high-rimmed saucer.  It looks stylish, but nets you sticky fingers.

Monday began with a traditional Japanese breakfast at Choyokan Honke and continued with a fax from our distributor, Matsuda-san from Tec Corporation, telling us we wouldn’t meet until 1:30pm, so Lukas and I headed past the Tokyo Dome to the Koishikawa Korakuen garden, where a variety of birds like the mejiro, a green sparrow-sized bird with a ring of white around its eyes, flew back and forth among the blossoming plum trees.  The formal garden design and the reigning quiet provided a stark contrast to the noisy chaos of the surrounding metropolis.  Even the highrises look serene when viewed from the small hill where vestiges of an old fortune-telling hall slumber in the shade of the surrounding pines, and the only outside noise penetrating into the garden was that of the roller coaster racing down its tracks.”

I was reminded of it by a piece of paper I found cleaning up, which I’d like to toss, so I’m storing the information here, just in case one day I’m in Japan and want to stay in a ryokan without internet or English-speaking employees (they labeled my shoe space “Stuecklin” and Lukas’s “Stephan,” that’s how much they understood us).  The ryokan’s address is 1-28-5 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo; the phone is +81 (0)3 3814 8181; the fax is +81 (0)3 3814 8177.  You can book it here or find contact info here, and here is the yahoo map.