What Came Out When He Ordered “Yakitori for Two”: The Night a Jimbocho Oden Shop, A-One, Changed My Values | Jimbocho and Me #13

He ordered “yakitori for two,” and what arrived were plump, pure-white skewers without a single scorch mark—the night, sometime in the late 1970s or early ’80s, when a Jimbocho oden shop called “A-One” turned a young man’s values upside down. Ryosuke Sakota of Keyaki Shoten writes about it, along with the painstaking work the proprietress put into keeping her oden broth perfectly clear. (From “Jimbocho and Me” #13, Hon no Machi, June 2026 issue)

A Shop Run by a Married Couple

The oden shop “A-One” was run by a husband and wife. Apart from the oden, everything on the menu posted on the wall was made and served by the husband in the kitchen at the back. The oden and the warmed sake were the wife’s domain. What kind of couple were they? Each handled their own work to perfection, and they were perfectly in step. The closest comparison might be the uncle and aunt who run the dango shop that is Tora-san’s family home in the film series Otoko wa Tsurai yo (It’s Tough Being a Man). The proprietor of A-One was friendly and easygoing, just like “Uncle” at the Toraya dango shop. The proprietress, on the other hand, was not chatty and sociable like “Auntie” at Toraya; if anything she was taciturn—not quite unfriendly—and she always reminded me of the mother of Kiyoshi, the hero of Yu Takita’s manga Terajima-cho Kitan (Strange Tales of Terajima-cho). Perhaps it was the way she sat, planted firmly in front of the oden pot; Kiyoshi’s mother, too, is drawn sitting planted in front of a long charcoal brazier, puffing on a kiseru pipe. Mind you, the proprietress of A-One didn’t smoke a pipe.

Still, as she got used to you, she turned out to be someone who would kindly teach you all sorts of things. Once, when I was peering into the oden pot and admiring how clear the broth was, she explained the reason. To keep the broth clear, she said, each kind of oden ingredient has to be prepared separately. Put them together and the broth turns cloudy. And the ingredients, each prepared separately, have to be kept apart in the pot with dividers so they don’t mix. “That way the broth stays clear and never goes cloudy.” She described this tremendous amount of work in the most matter-of-fact tone. There was nothing pushy about it at all, and I remember being deeply impressed.

The Night the Yakitori Amazed Me

The other thing that impressed me was the yakitori (grilled chicken skewers) the proprietor made. I was still in my twenties, and the only yakitori I had ever eaten was the tough kind at izakaya or the charred kind from street stalls, so I didn’t think much of it as food. “Yakitori” was on A-One’s menu too, but I had never ordered it, because I didn’t think it would be any good.

Then one day Mr. Kitahara ordered “yakitori for two,” including a serving for me. We had to wait quite a while, and when the yakitori finally arrived, I was astonished. It was something entirely different from any yakitori I had eaten before. On the plate in front of me lay skewers of chicken, perfectly white and plump, with pieces of leek cut to the same size tucked between them. Neither the chicken nor the leek had the faintest trace of scorching; they looked soft and fluffy and utterly tempting. What on earth had I been eating until now? It was a shock that turned my values upside down. And when I took a bite, the shock doubled. Delicious. Truly delicious.

So this is what chicken really tastes like, I thought—my eyes had been opened. It was also my first time eating yakitori grilled plain with salt rather than with the sweet tare sauce. As Mr. Kitahara put it, “It’s grilling it with salt that makes it taste this good.” From then on, ordering this yakitori along with the oden became my routine.

What follows is a story I heard from Tomohiko Maeda, owner of Musashino Shoin and nephew of A-One’s proprietor. Apparently staff from the Shueisha photo studio were regulars at A-One and came by all the time. Shueisha publishes a great many magazines, so there were photo shoots for the glossy pages almost every day, and when shooting idols with packed schedules—(to be continued)

(Ryosuke Sakota, Keyaki Shoten / “Jimbocho and Me” #13, Hon no Machi, June 2026 issue)

Ryosuke Sakota
Keyaki Shoten. After finishing high school, he joined Isseido Bookstore, a long-established antiquarian bookstore in Jimbocho. He is currently writing the series “Jimbocho and Me” for Hon no Machi.

▶Previous installment: The Oden Shop “A-One” (2): The Book Auctions an Isseido Newcomer Frequented

---

This article was published in the June 2026 issue (Vol. 14) of Hon no Machi, the community salon magazine of Kanda, Ochanomizu and Jimbocho. The story continues in the next issue. You can read the full text, along with the other articles, in the PDF.

▶Read the June 2026 issue of Hon no Machi (PDF, in Japanese)

Founded in 1980, Hon no Machi brings you the latest from Book Town every month, together with Jimbocho’s bookstores, publishers, cafés and galleries.

▶Back issues of our series are being published on our note page (in Japanese)

日本語で読む — Read this article in Japanese