Golden Week at Tokyo Bird

Overview

Golden Week in Japan is a glorious weeklong public holiday when almost everyone gets time off to travel and celebrate. We don’t get such a thing here, but we do have the friendly people of Tokyo Bird — Surry Hills’ resident izakaya — who are putting on a string of their own mini-festivities, and giving you perfect reason to drink sake and Midori on a school night.

Kicking the week off on Wednesday, April 29, is Emperor’s Day — the birthday of former Emperor Showa — and Tokyo Bird’s going all regal and swapping the regular yakitori meat for king prawns. Drinks-wise, you’ve got a choice between two aptly named $12 sake cocktails: The Emperor (with pineapple, mint and lime) and The Empress (with grapefruit, rosewater and mint). Monday, May 4, is Greenery Day, so we’re talking $12 Midori cocktails all night, plus free edamame. And come back the following night for Children’s Day. Dig into fried chicken katsu (i.e. nuggets, but this is no Happy Meal) and wash them down with a Calpis highball — sake mixed with the popular milky soft drink.

Plus the best hashtagged photo (#tokyobirdGoldenWeek) wins a 1.8 litre bottle of sake to keep at Tokyo Bird, so get grammin’. We’re guessing that’d keep you going till next year.