In the past year or so there has been something of a bakery boom around Ningyōchō, a pan pandemic of sorts, practically pan pandemonium, pan being the word for bread Japan long ago borrowed from French. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, five or six new bakeries have opened recently, bringing the total, according to my count, to twelve, each shop offering something different in addition to standard bread products. Not bad considering the Nihonbashi area, the core of shitamachi, is probably the most traditional neighborhood in Tokyo.
By far the oldest bakery/bread shop in the neighborhood is Matsumura (まつむら), an old-school Japanese bakery that opened in 1910 that sells traditional Japanese baked goods, especially shoku-pan (食パン), the thick-cut squares of white bread with a light brown crust most people prefer for breakfast toast. They also make sandwiches, my favorite being their ebi katsu (fried shrimp) sandwich. Next in longevity is Tanne Pan (タンねパン) which makes German style baked goods. When I first moved here I was very happy to have Tanne around as I love dark, German style breads, especially rye.
Three and a half years ago I happened to pass by a bakery that wasn’t even opened yet but whose name caught my eye: Beaver Bread. Beavers are the state animal of Oregon, my home state, as well as the nickname of teams from my undergrad college, Oregon State University. As it happened that day, I was wearing a t-shirt with an image of a beaver on the back. When I saw the name I got off my bicycle and took off the long sleeve shirt I was wearing over the t-shirt, much to the confusion of the people working to get the shop open. When I turned around, though, they understood what I was up to. We’ve been friends ever since. As for their products, at first my favorite item was the mentai pan (a small bun stuffed with mentaiko). A while later, when they started baking loaves of heavy rustic style sourdough bread, I fell in love and made it my bread of choice for morning toast. They also started making a wide variety of sweet treats, western-Japanese hybrid concoctions (like the mentaiko pan), sandwiches, and traditional items such as baguettes. Lately my favorite snack is their kuro-mame macha pan (黒豆抹茶パン, rolls made with macha tea and sweet black beans mixed in).
In the time since Beaver Bread opened, especially in the past year or year and a half, another five bakeries have opened in the area. There is Tokyo Noix Raisin on Amazakeyokochō street in the middle of Ningyōchō (shokupan only), Kekyaki-an (けやき庵), just around the corner from Beaver (various breads, sandwiches and hybrids), Boulangerie Django in Hamachō (breads, sweets, sandwiches), Oremine Bakers, a branch from whose main shop is in Tsukiji (sweets and sandwiches, and hybrids, my favorite being marinated tako (octopus) on an open cheese bread), and most recently, Pearl Bakery, a shop with no relation to a now well-known bakery in my home town of Portland (various breads). There are also two hotel bakeries, Bakery El Pan de Hamacho in the Hotel Trusty Premier located across the street from Meiji-za Theater as well as Iki in the Royal Park Hotel (cakes and sweets as well as shoku pan and more recently, macha pan). There are also two branches of Hiroshima based Little Mermaid, one in the front of the Tonare Peacock supermarket in Hamach Boulangerie Django in Hamachō, the other in Higashinihonbashi, across the street from Yagen temple. Both have good products, but the second one also has a long history dating back to the Meiji period when it was a milk bar (a place to drink milk which was considered medicine at the time) and before then as a medicine dealer (Yagen temple is associated with medicine).
Not to be overlooked are the additional six shops making and selling western style sweets (mostly cakes and pies), several chocolate makers, two bagel shops and one donut shop in addition to at least ten wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets) shops.