High Five in Tokyo

Hidetsugu Ueno preparing ice cubes for the drinks
(http://caskstrength.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/2008-cocktail-world-cup-in-queenstown-new-zealand/)

Looking on the web for cocktail bars in Tokyo, I bumped on an unexpected sentence: Japan is the Galápagos Archipelago of bartending! Hidetsugu Ueno said that: he is the manager of Bar High Five.

What I knew so far was that Japanese cell phones were affected by the Galápagos syndrome: like the endemic species that Darwin encountered on the Galápagos Islands they are fantastically evolved and divergent from their mainland cousins (according to Takeshi Natsuno from Keio University). Well, it goes the same for Japanese bartenders: they developed their own ways of making classics (bartenders or mixologists, if you prefer the term).

Hidetsugu Ueno is obsessed with finding the perfect shape and perfect temperature for ice cubes: different drinks need ice cubes of different temperatures, and carved like diamond. If this is not Galápagos syndrome, then Darwin invented his giant tortoises.

Hidetsugu Ueno demonstrating a double twist at Bar Convent Berlin 2009
(video by alkoteka)

Ueno San has been the mixologist at Star Bar in Ginza before starting his own High Five.

Star Bar, Ginza
(http://www.network54.com/Forum/234648/thread/1101185252/Report+on+MJLC+dinner+in+Tokyo!!)

(Bartenders and Mixologists)