Drake’s Perennials in Tokyo
Tokyo Highball
It’s early evening in Shinjuku. Behind an unremarkable door and up a few flights of stairs is Hermit Bar, a dim windowless room with soft jazz playing from concealed speakers. Behind a counter polished to a diamond shine, two barmen in pressed white shirts are entered in a wordless choreography of pouring, mixing, and chopping blocks of pristine. One of them smiles and points to two empty stools.
A Japanese Oasis Grows in Brooklyn
In the basement level of a typical Brooklyn industrial warehouse, we slip off our shoes and duck into a room that could have been—and in some ways has been—airlifted over from old Kyoto. “Chowa means ‘pursuit of harmony,’ in Japanese,” says Ray Suzuki who, along with his friend Yudai Kanayama, opened the space last summer. Ray is a multi-disciplinary designer and Yudai, who we’ve known for several years, is the busy man behind several restaurants and his own construction business.
Editors Picks
Revue: Alex Tieghi-Walker
