Omoide Yokocho (Piss Alley)

Yes, this place is actually called Piss Alley. The polite Japanese name is Omoide Yokocho — Memory Lane — but let us be honest about why it got the other name. In the nineteen forties, this was an illicit drinking quarter that had no toilets. None. Drinkers who needed to relieve themselves walked to the neighbouring train tracks and did their business there. The name was earned, not given.

This narrow strip of tiny bars and yakitori stalls started as a black market immediately after the Second World War ended in nineteen forty-five. Shinjuku had been bombed to rubble, and in the wreckage, makeshift drinking establishments sprang up to serve a population that desperately needed a drink. The stalls were ramshackle, the food was whatever could be sourced, and the atmosphere was pure postwar survival.

Something remarkable happened in the nineteen nineties. A fire destroyed part of the alley. The local government could have used the opportunity to modernise, widen the lanes, bring the area up to code. Instead, they deliberately rebuilt the damaged sections to match their original Showa-era appearance. They loved the aesthetic of postwar grit so much they chose to preserve it. The about sixty tiny eateries crammed in here today specialise in yakitori and nikomi — a rich beef tendon stew that has been simmering on these same stoves for decades.

Each stall seats maybe six to eight people on stools squeezed along a counter. Smoke from the grills drifts through the narrow passages. Your knees will touch the person next to you. None of this is manufactured charm. It genuinely has not changed much since the black market days, except now there are toilets.