Name: Minowa, a lovable downtown Tokyo
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T18:13:34.000Z
Duration: 18 min 50 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi, I'm Bob, your host for this episode, and today I'm here in Minowa, Tokyo.

To-infinitive

Now, Minowa is an area located in the northern part of Taito Ward, but it's probably easier to understand or visualize it if you just think of it as the north side of Asakusa.

Past simple

It is said that the area got its name because of its close proximity to the coastline back in the old days, when it was called Mizunohana, or Water Nose.

But over time, it eventually evolved into the name that it has today, Minowa.

Now, in the Taisho era, this area was known as Shinkai-chi, which roughly translates to the new opening and urban development.

And this area had quite a thriving entertainment district, and it had up to 400 bars at one point.

The Minowa Ginza Shopping District, which we will visit here today, is an old shopping district with a history of over more than 100 years, having been established in 1919.

So come join me today as I take a look around the Minowa Ginza Shopping Street, an area with an extremely retro feel, an area that should be a lot of fun, and we might have a surprise or two in store.

Every picture, different train, different era.

Well, if this doesn't scream retro, I don't know what does.

It's like that old painting, the waves, Mount Fuji.

Obviously, it's the Hokusai themed painting.

They're not painted by Hokusai himself, but painted by an artist to come here and do that, which is a stunning representation of that Hokusai painting.

It's very famous all around the world, and to have this in your hotel room has to be such a treat.

Oh my, I don't know what to look at first.

It's above the TV, but it just looks so beautiful.

Obviously, I need to take a look in here.

It makes you feel like you've gone back in time a little bit.

I'll take a look through here, if that's okay.

We've transported back to an older time in Japan.

I feel like I've gone into the countryside, into kind of some special old inn or yokan, as it would be called, but it's right in the heart of Tokyo.

You've got this time slip, train hotel, the bottom, you see all the trains on the first floor, come with this beautiful, beautiful room.

Obviously, I would need to take off my shoes to go inside here, but it just feels so authentically from the past.

It just gives you a real, oh gosh, I don't know, just a special feeling just to see it.

I think there's something else that I have to mention about this hotel.

I mean, this beam, which is kind of the heart and soul of the room, is probably about 200 years old.

Some of the beams above as well, maybe about 100 or 200 years old.

So, it's not only retro in looks, it's retro in reality, and that is impressive.

So, as you can see, the seat that I'm sitting in is not a normal seat for a restaurant.

This is the actual seat from a train here in Japan.

The Odakyu Line's Romance Car is where these seats came from.

These are the original seats, and it's just kind of cool to be sitting in this.

I'm on a train, but I'm actually in the restaurant of the hotel.

All right, so I'm still here, and now I'm going to try a little bit of burger.

So, they recommended it, so I'm going to take it.

A lot of times in Japan, you're given this little burger bukuro, which is a burger bag to protect yourself from all the juices falling into your hands, but I'm going to stick to my old way of eating it.

Just use my hands so you can see the goodness of the burger.

But it was a very juicy, perfectly grilled burger.

So, I'm going to try this hojicha azuki milk crepe.

So, hojicha is like a roasted green tea, and azuki is kind of a sweet beans, and then a milk crepe.

Normally, they're not going to just give it to you by hand, but just for me, for the purpose of this, just having it here.

You know, you can sit down, and you can eat it, and you can enjoy it.

So, like roasted green tea, and you can see the azuki beans are kind of at the top here, and the milk crepe.

I mean, if you're a green tea lover, like I am, it's really nice to have that smoked green tea flavor on the top, almost.

When you get through the azuki beans, a little bit of layer of sweetness, then you have that milk cream underneath it.

That gives it that real kind of substance to it, texture.

So, this is also an original dessert of this restaurant, cafe, hojicha and coffee.

Yeah, so he's been doing kind of the tea for 30 years, but he only came here just one year ago, and opened this store, and he loves the hojicha.

So, he loves that kind of the smoked green tea, and I think that he's going to be able to share this with a lot more people here shortly.

So, you should all come and check out his store, and check out his tea, his hojicha, his desserts.

All right, so I've come to the next shop, and it's a karaage shop, or a fried chicken shop, and I don't even know, with the videos that I've been in, I can never pass up a chance to have some fried chicken.

So, this is just the shio karaage, or just a salt karaage.

I can smell the salt already, and it's gonna be really hot.

So, just be prepared for my face reaction when I burn the inside of my mouth.

It's really juicy, perfectly crispy on the outside, and so tender and juicy on the inside.

It's salt on the outside, so it's a beautiful contrast to the inside of the chicken.

All right, so I can't ever pass up on sweets, and so we're gonna try some ohagi, which is kind of like a rice ball, or like a mochi almost, and it's covered in a red bean paste.

You can have different sesame seeds or other things, and it says, so every morning it's made fresh here.

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Minowa, a lovable downtown Tokyo

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