As we were taking a midnight stroll a few nights ago, we passed in front of a neighborhood snack, and saw the mama-san walking one of her customers back to his home nearby. A snack is like a very small bar, usually only a counter and a few seats, run by one person (and usually the only employee) who is usually a woman and is refered to as the mama-san. The people that go there tend to be regulars, and there’s a sort of family dynamic that forms (probably the reason for the mama-san title). MATTHEW’S BEST HIT TV always has a 30 second segment in which they show video footage from the Yukari Snack in Akabane, and we always get to see the Yukari Mama doing plain weird things with her customers. I’d like to go to one someday, but I think I lack the courage to do so, especially since I don’t feel like my Japanese would stand up to a night of drinking.
Category: General
Jean Snow lives and breathes design and pop culture in Tokyo -- sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for the following online/offline publications: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Game|Life, and The Japan Times. He also manages the gallery space at Cafe Pause.
Jean Snow is a daily contributor to Wired magazine's game blog, Game|Life, covering game news from Japan and beyond.
Tokyolife: Art and Design covers Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives. Jean Snow provided coordination assistance.
The Superfuture Superguides are a series of PDF travel guides to some of your favorites cities, updated monthly, and obsessively compiling the best places to shop, eat, and drink. The Tokyo guide is edited by Jean Snow.
He is also the design/culture editor at Neojaponisme, a web journal covering social and cultural aspects of Japan. Read the manifesto, by founder and chief editor W. David Marx, here.
PauseTalk is a regular series of events that take place at Cafe Pause on the first Monday of every month, with a start time of 20:00. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can get together and discuss their own projects, as well as cultural currents of the city. The next edition happens August 4 (there is no July edition).
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When I first came, one of my students took me to his regular snack. We were drinking from the bottle keep, the mama-san was cooking me all kinds of fantastic dishes all night, and the girls were practicing their English. 24-year-old chappatsu girls singing love duets on karaoke with 65-year-old company presidents to the accompaniment of cockfighting videos??!!! I wouldn’t pay the outrageous price myself, but it was an experience to remember.
Money is another thing that makes me stay away. I’ve heard horror stories.