Tokyo Kissaten

Our eyes take a moment to adjust to the dim light upon walking into Ladrio. The room is like a vault, its brick walls and floor emitting a scent familiar to anyone who’s ever been in a cave or stone cellar. This mustiness is comforting, however, and the cool air a welcome reprieve from the furnace of the Tokyo summer outside. Soon we can make out several low tables extending back into the narrow space. People sit alone or in pairs sipping coffee or puffing cigarettes. Some converse in hushed tones as Edith Piaf is piped quietly from an unseen stereo. A few heads swivel in our direction but gazes never linger here.

Umeshu Dining Myoujou

Long valued for its medicinal properties, the East Asian stone fruit ume appears in Japan’s oldest pharmacological dictionary, written in 918. Something between a plum an apricot, the ume is more acidic than both and rich in antioxidants. The first mention of umeshu, a liqueur made by steeping ume in usually distilled spirits and commonly translated as plum wine, came centuries later in a book of Japanese cuisine published in 1697. Ume’s medicinal value appears to have carried over, though, as this later work claims that the flavorful tonic both spurs the appetite and counteracts poisons.