Where it's at

You wander around and around for hours looking for that bar or cafe that speaks to you.  Then you find a narrow alley near the Shinjuku train station, a bright tangled mess of a street, almost under the railroad tracks.  The bar is small, old and greasy.  It may have even survived the war.  The countertop is a long, single-cut, curving piece of timber worn smooth by years of elbows and sweat.  The walls are covered with menu specials, beautiful handwritten signs on pink, yellow, blue and green paper.  Nothing has moved in here in several decades, everything caramel tinted with age, smoke and grease. The place almost glows.  Golden.  Outside a typhoon gasps and blows a last blast of moist, cool air.