HIBIKI

* Cuisine: Japanese
* Where: Ginza
* Tel: 03 5524 7855
* Website: via gnavi
* Menu: E/J
* Cost: around 6,000 per head
* Ohishi:
* Rating: ---


Natural ingredients, lightly-cooked (and sometimes just raw sliced veggies) interesting menu in designer surroundings. Choices include horse sashimi and baked natto and some dishes are cooked (or rather boiled) tableside, all of which makes this a good choice for slightly-adventurous foreign visitors. Unlikely to prompt a postcard home but inoffensive and healthy. Reasonably priced too.

GONPACHI

* Cuisine: Japanese
* Where: Ginza
* Tel: 03 5524 3641
* Website: click the pic
* Menu: E/J
* Cost: around 6,000 per head
* Ohishi:
* Rating: ---

Reaching this location at the back of the cavernous G-Zone complex means a long indoor walk past Ginza branches of other Global Dining Group establishments. It feels like a kind of restaurant Disneyworld with Italy-land, Asia-land, etc and that makes the whole experience rather corporate. The interior of this branch is note a patch on the Kill Bill set of the Nishi Azabu location, feeling as it does as a cross between a company dining room and a hawker centre. Food is fine but not interesting enough for a return visit to be likely.

LAI-KA

* Cuisine: Chinese
* Where: Ginza
* Tel: 03-3541-4664. Click the pic for directions.
* English Menu: ?
* Cost: ?
* Ohishi: nothing
* Ordered: lunch course
* Rating: --

Small portions with a generous variety of flavours at this Higashi Ginza spot. Everything here has a flower motif and the fare seems squarely pitched at the female market. Bite sized, lightly spiced dishes were interesting and tasty with a little unexpected twist here and there - pumpkin and sharks fin soup, for example. No particular problems but no real reason to return.

KISOJI

• Cuisine: Japanese - shabu shabu
• Where: Ginza
• Tel: 03-3574-8806
• English Menu: not sure, but its easy to just pick a course
• Cost: 6,500 yen pp (course menu)
• Ohishi: nothing especially stood out.
• Ordered: shabu shabu set
• Rating: -- 1/2
  
  Kimono/yukata-clad staff were attentive, helped with the 'cooking', never let our glasses run dry for long and disappeared at the end so we felt no pressure to leave. Food was plentiful and portions generous. Perhaps it's these attributes that make it as popular with gaijin and salarymen alike, because the food itself is standard shabu-shabu fare. Nothing lets the side down and nothing particlularly sets it above the multitude of similar spots. The Marks & Spencer of shabu-shabu.