A note on the words: yakiton and motsu-yaki are grilled skewers of pork and pork offal, a staple of Tokyo’s casual red-lantern drinking spots. At this shop, skewers can be ordered with salt, tare (a sweet-savory soy glaze), or a house miso sauce seasoned with garlic and chili pepper; here the writer pairs a highball with pork harami (diaphragm, an offal cut that eats much like tender lean red meat) glazed in tare and nankotsu (crunchy cartilage with bits of fatty meat attached) grilled with salt.
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Akimoto Ya on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Drinkers everywhere, thank you for waiting! It is time for Hangover Meshi (hangover meal)!
Deciding to have really just one more drink, I headed into a yakiton (grilled pork skewer) shop nearby.
It is almost right in front of you as you step out of the ticket gates at Nogata Station. Apparently it is a popular yakiton shop that started in 2004 with just a U-shaped counter and has now grown to 70 seats. Believe it or not — and I had no idea at all — shops that trained here and went independent are called “Akimoto Ya-kei” (Akimoto Ya-lineage shops), so for motsu-yaki (grilled offal skewer) fans it is, they say, more or less the head house! If I had known that, I would have eaten more, ha. Alongside tare (sweet soy glaze) and salt, their specialty is that you can choose a miso sauce spiked with garlic and chili pepper for your skewers. Ordering is self-service by scanning the QR code at your seat, so it is also nice being able to browse the menu and add orders at your own pace.
In quick, out quick — a model drinker, wouldn’t you say? Right? ha
Now then, I started off with a highball.
Sooo good!
This feeling of being enclosed in plastic sheeting is great too — it has real atmosphere, ha.
With the harami (diaphragm), the sweet-savory aroma of charred tare sauce reaches your nose first. Harami is meat from the diaphragm, so even though it is offal, it eats almost like lean red meat. Bite into it and the fibers come apart tenderly, letting the juices trapped inside well out. Layer the rich depth of the bold tare over that and it is completely a dish made for rice, ha. Still, being a drinker, washing it right down with alcohol has to be the right call here!
At Akimoto Ya, harami with miso sauce is apparently a specialty too — comparing the two would have been a good move.
The nankotsu (cartilage) is grilled with salt, so the savory char and the flavor of the meat itself come straight through. Sink your teeth in and it gives a crisp, crunchy snap, and with every chew the sweet fat from the meat clinging around the cartilage slowly seeps out. All that time spent chewing becomes an accompaniment to your drink in its own right. Because the flavor is light and clean, alternating it with the tare skewers means you could keep going forever.
If only I had known it was such a famous place! It might have been good to come a little earlier. Living up to its reputation as the head house of yakiton, every skewer has real substance to it. Just by switching between tare, salt and miso, it feels like the kind of shop where you could eat as many skewers as you like. I will come back for a proper meal next time. Still, for a place I just wandered into to turn out this good — Nogata is not to be underestimated, ha.
Here’s hoping I run into something delicious again today!
Akimoto Ya (Motsuyaki / Nogata Station, Toritsu-Kasei Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.5
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
