With about 100,000 restaurants, you won’t go hungry. Forget sushi, or at least postpone it – Tokyo offers a mouthwatering selection of types of cuisine. Try okonomiyaki – a Japanese pizza/pancake/omelette that you DIY grill at your own table, or shabu shabu – thinly sliced beef, or izakaya pub food – delicious grill food, best experienced at Gonpachi (1-13-11 Nishi-Azabu, Minato-ku; +81-3/5771-0170, fax +81-3/5771-0180; www.globaldining.com), where President Bush ate on one of his visits. Shouts of welcome ring out whenever new diners arrive in this atmospheric, high-ceilinged building (much like the dining room featured in Kill Bill) and dishes such as grilled skewers of asparagus and bacon are served with surprisingly good soy sauce. Other foods jostling for hungry visitors include yakitori, robata, udon, tempura, chirashi-zushi and myriad Western options, for those travelers not ready to eat still writhing shrimps or jellyfish, or who simply want a taste of home.

Western style restaurants and fast food chains abound, including TGI Fridays, Tony Roma’s and McDonald’s . Easy snacks, such as fresh baked cookies and waffles, are available from stalls outside Asakusa arcade.

As for the sushi, it’s at its freshest in the sushi establishments around Tsukiji Fish Market . Hip modern sushi is also an appetizing surprise – nouvelle cuisine arrangements of lone asparagus spears on nori and quivering raw egg yolk on rice are for the adventurous.

For Western cuisine and microbrews, Popeye Beer has usually 40 beers on tap and many of the beers change on a daily basis depending on what sells out and what comes in the door. The staff and owner speak excellent English and the hospitality of the staff is outstanding. It's a small and cozy place. Many of the customers are local residents and a good number of them speak English.

The owner of Popeye's is an expert in Japanese beers. He hand selects the beers and has them shipped in daily. In addition to the standard tap beers, there are usually several hand pump and gravity tap beers available. Excellent beer styles like India pale ale, stout, and hefewiezen are available. They also produce their house beer, Divine Vamp3 - an India black ale.

The food selection is more Western than Japanese with selections including fried chickern, yakisoba, spaghetti, and pizza. They have a great happy hour offer from 5 PM to 8 PM. Each evening they feature 4 or 5 beers of the day. With the purchase of a featured beer, you get a half serving of a food item. A popular item is the danshaku fried potato wedges.

Getting there: Popeye Beer Club is located just two stations from the Akihabara station (JR Yamanote Line) on the JR Sobu Line (towards Chiba). The station name is Ryogoku. Use the West exit of the station and you will see a small side street. Take it and go down one block . Turn right and Popeye Beer Club is on the left side of the street about 200 feet down. Their website www.40beersontap.com has a map and a fairly updated listing of the beers they have. They are open Monday through Saturday.

For those planning on eating out with Japanese friends, keep in mind that unless you want your glass to be refilled, and refilled and refilled, leave it full when you’ve had enough. Exciting arrays of sake, frozen sake and shochu (rice vodka) concoctions are on offer, as well as the unaltered original beverages.