Yakitori alley...

Have you ever heard of the stupid American charge? Most countries will have a small fee to eat and/or drink for foreigners; especially the American tourist. Whilst on Mauros first night in japan, we went to a yakitori restaurant in Shinjuku. Little did we know there was a charge, otoshi, where it is a state wide charge to drink in a restaurant. So, we decide not to pay that "small charge" of 800 yen and pay only for our food. Not 30 seconds after walking out of the restaurant and onto the street, the entire restaurant staff surrounds us with smiles, politely asking us to please pay the mandatory fee. We decided it was for the best to comply with the staff as to not get arrested. At least we learned our lesson about that!

To follow, we stumbled upon the actual yakitori alley. Our hearing was taken over by the sound of meats sizzling over red hot coals and our nose was swarming with caramelizing sugars and charred chicken hearts. Inside these hallway like restaurants, there are people from all corners of the world chowing down on this age old delicacy of Japan. We finally come to a decision of where to eat and right in front of us is a sign that says, "otoshi, mandatory charge to drink". Mauro and I both looked at each other and laughed. Our very recent escapade turned out to be a stupid American idea. From then on, we had no issue of paying the drinking charge.

Once we made our decisions to eat chicken hearts, pig tongue, liver, gizzard and kidney, we gorged our gullets with the ancient delicacies. Each one of the skewers were just as flavorful as the last and all cooked to perfection. We could not have made a better decision of where to get yakitori. It was well worth the adventures and it proved to be a pretty great story. "How we almost got arrested in Tokyo".