American, Shibuya アメリカン、渋谷

I’m not going to recommend the American – I feel a little embarrassed just admitting to visiting the place – but will admit that, at times, it has its uses. What they are I’ll not go into here.

It’s convenient, situated just across the road from Shibuya station’s Hachiko exit, on the 8^th floor of the Daigi Building (next to Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ bank). It’s cheap, with draft beer weighing in at ¥250 (yes, that cheap) and most of the food costing just a few hundred yen at most, and considerably less during the daily happy hour (5pm – 7pm) when the price of food is heavily discounted. It’s entertaining, in the way staring at a fatal car wreck is.

The place is faded; I’d guess it was pretty cool in the 80s or early 90s. Now the décor is tacky, dirty and almost charmingly “retro.” Hey, they even play 80s Genesis! Spacious, the American can – and usually does – accommodate somewhere in the region of a hundred or so low-price revellers. The clientele are an eclectic mix of under-age drinkers, students, fledgling salarymen and balding oyaji.

The service floats somewhere between rude and disinterested, being provided by a motley crew of young Shibuya types with spiky blonde hair, piercings and bad manners.

Visit there regularly enough and you’ll have the chance to watch groups of young men try to impress their female companions (and perhaps each other) by drinking themselves into oblivion, before vomiting all over the place and spending the rest of the evening on the toilet floor. The staff certainly do nothing to dissuade such behaviour, no matter how obvious to all around what the eventual outcome will be. Invariably, once the vomit has been sprayed around, one of the poor young females in the group ends up cleaning up the mess and apologising to surrounding patrons for the “meiwaku” her charming gentleman friend has caused.

The food is uniformly awful. Or at least it’s no better, and probably more often than not a lot worse, than convenience store food. That said, it is ridiculously cheap… After a certain amount of beer (can be a lot at these prices) the fries, eda mame, vegetable sticks with miso, and grilled squid with mayo seem a feast.

To make the whole package even more “enticing” each time you visit you’ll be provided with a sheet of coupons providing your first drink free on your next visit. Thus it is they come back for more…

So, what’s it good for? If you’re in the area, short of time, broke, or just bored of visiting the thousands of better establishments Tokyo has to offer, the American is an easy option for cheap drinking when the imagination fails.

Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that they on occasion like to pad out the bill with a few extra items. Be vigilant.

Tel: 03-3464-1177