Chanko Dojo Main store

"Chankonabe" (or simply "chanko") is a famous stew of meat and vegetables that sumo wrestlers relish. I was curious enough to venture out on my own one evening to try it as everyone else was just too stuffed to eat anything else! I took the Tokyo subway's Oedo line to Ryogoku, the territory of sumo ...wrestlers, which is a bit of a distance away from the Tokyo city centre. I found several restaurants just opposite the subway station, and using the overhead bridge, ended up, quite by chance (serendipity?), at the cosy Chanko Doujou (Main Branch/Honten). It was clearly popular with locals, for it was packed with mainly salaried men socialising noisily after a hard day's work. It was so local that there wasn't any "Eigo menyū" (英語メニュー) and I must have been the only foreigner. There's a chicken option (about ¥1,900) but I chose the seafood nabe (¥3,240), and LOL it was a real feast for just one person! (Check out the photos!) Needless to say, given all the wonderful ingredients, eg fish, octopus, crab, clam, prawn, vegetables, meatballs, etc, the soup was absolutely divine! It's certainly the kind of soup to slurp on, on a cold evening in winter! The waitress spoke very limited English (but then, so was my Japanese!), but she was very warm and hospitable, volunteering to take photos of me with the hotpot and dishing out the stew for me. She was really thrilled when after the meal, I thanked her profusely with all the Japanese adjectives I could muster!

Visited February 2017