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Perhaps the oldest coffee shop and bar in the back streets of Jinbocho, the bookshop district of Tokyo. I am told it started as a bar for GIs during the Occupation in the late 1940's. In 1955, when it was first introduced to me, during the days it was a coffeeshop with French chanson music in the background. Then at night it became a bar for local shopowners. It still exists today in 2007, but the ownership has changed several times and their speciality, a delicious Vienna Coffee 'mit schlag' is not what it used to be. For many years it was my favorite haunt on long Tokyo afternoons...a good book and Vienna coffee with Evette Giraud's and Edith Piaff's voices alternately caressing and churning my soul.

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Japan 日本

Jinbocho Unagiya 神保町鰻や

Tokyo 東京