Aonghas Crowe

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Destine

This should do the trick.

Ten years ago I started really traveling Japan rather than just living here. On my first visit to Tokyo in a decade I happened to pass by a Uighur restaurant. It then occurred to me that if Tōkyō had Uighur, they might have Lebanese, too, and, hey presto, they did. As I drank an Almaza beer, I got a strong hankerin’ fer a narghile. Another GoogleMap search and I learned that there was a shisha cafe in a place I’d never heard of before called Shimokitazawa. So, I popped over there and, boy, what a discovery. I had been smoking at home on my own narghile for over five years, but had never come across any places that had it in Japan. The place in Shimokita was Japan’s very first and I would be dropping by there regularly over the next decade.

I quickly learned that that if I did a search of ‘“mizu tabako”, I’d find an interesting place with cool people, but not as cool as the ones I met in Shimokita. Still, cool ‘nuff.

An’ so, that’s how I found Jajouka in Kyōto and Destine in Ōsaka. Now, 10 years later, I am still coming. Staff have become friends in the meantime. Love this place!

Destiny!