Kyoto may be known to visitors as a place to go sightseeing and experience Japan's wealth of traditional crafts and culture, but it happens also to be a living, working city of over a million people, who like to go out eating and drinking like the rest of us.
A lot of that eating and drinking takes place on Kiyamachi-dori, a lively street lined with scores of bars and restaurants just across the river from the geisha district of Gion; and a good place to get some comfort food and line your stomach for the rigors of a night out is Takasegawa Teppan Doujou, just a little way up the street from Shijo-dori and Kawaramachi station.
On a corner by a bridge over the stream running alongside Kiyamachi-dori, it doesn't look like much from the outside or, to be honest, from the inside. It had got my attention with the Japanese characters for 'Okonomiyaki' (pancake) on a lantern, then with the English menu taped into the door.
It looks like the typical, unpretentious neighborhood izakaya it is, with a few tables across the narrow room from an eight-seat counter with an impressive collection of bottles at the end. There's a range of Hanshin Tigers memorabilia around the place, including Tigers branded shochu bottles, and the walls are decorated with beer advertising posters.
From the English menu I chose the mixed okonomiyaki, which was both filling and tasty, with hearty chunks of octopus and squid in among with the beef, shrimp, onion, cabbage and other ingredients, and an egg 'topping' that turned out to be a coating. On the side I had a very generous bowl of tako-wasabi, raw octopus in a kind of wasabi paste, which is much more appetizing than anyone can make it sound; the blobs of octopus were satisfyingly chewy, and the burn of the wasabi was lively without taking my head off, and went well with the pancake.
There are a lot of different pancakes on the menu, at between ¥700 and ¥1000: squid, shrimp, pork kimchi and stewed beef are some choices. There's a similar range of fried noodle dishes for about the same prices, and for between around ¥500 and ¥800 there's a long list of teppanyaki (food you can have cooked on the hotplate), among them vegetables, beef, pork and chicken. Beer is ¥500, sours ¥400, soft drinks ¥300, shochu between ¥400 and ¥900, and they have a separate sake menu ranging from ¥500 all the way up to ¥1800.
So Kyoto isn't all about refinement, high prices and small portions; at places like Takasegawa Teppan Doujou its possible to eat and drink heartily and cheaply.
