Meguro

Meguro reads as a polished residential ward, but the two places covered here run against that image. One is a tonkatsu house founded in 1939; the other is the only museum in the world devoted to parasites. What they share is having pushed a single subject to its limit.

The tonkatsu house has an unusual practice. Names are called in the order people entered, not the order they sat, and the number of cuts scored into a cutlet varies with the customer's build — a detail that comes from an interview with the owner. Sit at the counter and you see the whole frying process; here that is considered part of the point.

The parasite museum charges no admission. It runs on donations, and beside the 8.8-metre tapeworm specimen hangs a cord of the same length that visitors can pick up to feel the scale. It is small but densely packed, and the fact that such a place sits quietly in the middle of a residential district says everything about this ward.