Takoume calls itself the oldest oden house in Japan, and the claim has the years behind it: the shop was founded in 1844 by Umejiro Okada, and five generations of the family have kept the pot going since. The name folds two things together — the counter format the founder used, tako, and the ume of Umejiro himself. In Kansai, oden goes by another name entirely: kanto-daki, the Kanto-style simmer, adopted here and made the city's own.
What you eat
Two things carry the house. One is tako kanro-ni, octopus simmered slow and sweet until it turns glossy and tender. The other is the kanto-daki itself — a dark, tamari-scented broth in which each piece has been sitting long enough to take on its color. The founder is remembered for a third: saezuri, whale tongue, which he is said to have been the first to put in the pot. It is best taken the old way, one piece at a time, between sips of jokan — sake warmed to just above body heat.
A counter that keeps time
There is little to Takoume beyond the counter, and that is the design. You sit close to the simmering pot, order by the piece, and let the evening unspool at the pace of the sake. Seats are few and fill early, so the room turns over quietly through the night — a working oden bar that has outlasted nearly two centuries of the city rebuilding itself around it.
Pull up a stool if
Travelers drawn to the long thread of a place — who would rather perch at a 19th-century counter with warm sake than sit down to anything grand.