Food is a big drawcard for people visiting Japan, particularly food experiences you can't find anywhere else. A restaurant that's served ? A luxury store that only deals in ? A third-generation ? The country's ? You’ll find this here and much more.
"One of the great things about Japan or Japanese food is this attention to detail and this hyper-focus on one thing," says Ben Groundwater, author of . "Often the chef will dedicate their entire life to learning that craft and perfecting it, so that's what makes the experience over there so interesting and so delicious as well."
Take sushi, for instance.
"Like so many Japanese styles of food, it exists on a variety of different levels in terms of quality and price. So you can get kaiten sushi, which is the conveyor belt sushi, where you get what you'd expect in Australia, but then it goes up to this really high-end sushi, where you’re sitting in this restaurant at a wooden bar in front of the chef," Groundwater says. Here, you might experience an artful procession of 20-30 courses, where premium rice and seafood are sculpted into meticulous bites.
Often the chef will dedicate their entire life to learning that craft and perfecting it, so that's what makes the experience over there so interesting.
"One of my favourite iterations of that style is [provided by the restaurant] in Meguro," the travel writer says.
Chatting to chefs is such an intrinsic part of the high-end sushi experience, Groundwater points out. "As a tourist who doesn't speak Japanese, that's something you'll often miss out on."
But that language barrier drops away at Sushi Rinda, where chefs communicate in English and can elaborate on the nigiri, sake and other aspects of what you're eating. You'll especially want to know about the grains in each dish.
At a high-end sushi restaurant, it is all about the rice. And sushi chefs are known for their rice before they're known for their fish. Source: Ben Groudnwater
"At a high-end sushi restaurant, it is all about the rice. And sushi chefs are known for their rice before they're known for their fish. Fish is something that comes and goes, it's seasonal. If you've got contacts, you'll be able to get good fish. But the rice is something else," he says. A sushi chef considers every aspect of the grain – its temperature, size, its sweetness, how it's seasoned, how it's prepared with fish and the different vinegars that add a measured tang to each bite. "There's so much to it."
"We think it's all about the fish, but really, it's all about the rice."
The travel writer met "one of the most powerful" tuna sellers at the . The seller told Groundwater that if a chef wants to buy from him, he'll finalise his decision after visiting their restaurant. "And if he thinks their rice is good enough for his tuna, he'll start to sell them tuna," the author says. "It's kind of a misunderstanding we have as non-Japanese when we go there, when we think it's all about the fish, but really, it's all about the rice. I find that fascinating."
Another unique food experience Groundwater recommends is , a yakiniku restaurant in Ebisu. "Yakiniku is grilled meat, it was actually inspired by Korean barbecue," he says. "One of those things I love about Japanese cuisine and culture is they're quite happy to take other people's ideas and mould them into their own – things like gyoza, which came from China, and tempura, which came from Portugal."
Yoroniku is levels above your average barbecue restaurant because you're served high-end cuts. "The wagyu at a place like this is like the tuna at a sushi restaurant," he says. "The chef at Yoroniku, , has these amazing contacts, so he gets the best wagyu."
Yakiniku (meat for grilling). Source: Ben Groundwater
There were around 14 courses, highlighting meats from different parts of Japan – sometimes served on their own, with a sauce, rolled like sushi or cooked over wide-ranging heat. "It was an absolute symphony of beef," the writer says. "It was like an opera in some ways. Everything building towards a crescendo."
It was an absolute symphony of beef.
The final note was composed of chateaubriand. "These beautiful slabs of beef came out and were put in these sandwiches and it was just mind-blowing," he says.
The char of grilled meat also appeals to Michael Ryan. The co-author of and chef cites yakitori as an experience to savour in Japan. "You can have it at all levels, from sitting at a sake crate down a dingy laneway to high-end Michelin-starred stuff with your really good wine list," he says. The name yakitori translates to grilled bird, and this style of cooking presents all aspects of the animal on smoke-kissed skewers.
"Any decent yakitori chef will say there are 27-30 cuts in a chicken," he says. It's a resourceful way to use up every scrap – from the skin and liver to the fat around the kidneys.
"Then there's the classic chochin, which is a signature for most yakitori places – which is the egg taken from the chicken before the shell forms," Ryan adds. "Chochin means lantern. So when you hold it up to the light, you can see through the egg."
Source: Ben Groundwater
For him, restaurant in Tokyo is an itinerary-worthy restaurant in this style. Even though some people might find it "confronting" to try chicken liver or fallopian tube, "you eat it in one go and it's delicious," he says.
The chef points out that the different textures of chicken – like the crunchy gizzards – are what make yakitori worth sampling.
"I've taken my tour group to a yakitori place and they'll go, 'I'll just have the thigh and breast just for us' and then complain at the end of it, that it was a boring meal, because it was all the same," Ryan says.
The contrasting textures aren't the only attraction – the smoke and charcoal depth from the skewers sitting over the grill are captivating, too. "There's a lot of skill involved in yakitori."
Japan is also worth visiting for the ultimate vegetarian staple: tofu. Cookbook author recalls how her obaachan (grandma) had fresh-made tofu on her table every day.
"My grandparents, who were the custodians of a Buddhist temple in a small town in Chiba, were spoiled for choice when it came to fresh tofu shops on their street," Davies says. "I remember those old-fashioned shops – just a room of spartan concrete floors and stainless-steel vats of water holding the morning's just-made tofu, and a smiling old woman selling them. They've all but disappeared now."
Davies wanted to recapture this tofu-making experience for her upcoming cookbook, so she travelled to the foothills of Nagano's mountain ranges to learn how to make fresh bean curd. Her teacher was Kobayashi-san, "who makes tofu for all the local schools and sells the rest through his tiny shop", Davies says.
I still love to go there to pick up things like my favourite furikake and rice crackers to take home in my suitcase and bento or onigiri to eat later that day.
"We sat down to taste our creations, along with some wonderful little dishes that Kobayashi-san's wife had made: okara (soybean pulp) doughnuts, sweet soy-braised tofu with mushrooms and a pot of miso soup was warming over the old-fashioned stove heater.
First, Kobayashi-san instructed, 'I must taste it on its own'. Then the next bite should be with a pinch of salt and some egoma oil (perilla seed oil), which the locals grow themselves in community fields with laborious harvests. It is a highly prized, very fragrant oil, a little similar to sesame oil but more herby than nutty, that has been long appreciated in East Asian countries for its medicinal properties as much as for its use in the kitchen. It might be my favourite new flavour discovery. Finally, Kobayashi-san said, ‘try it with soy sauce.’ And that bite tasted like my obaachan's breakfast. This is what I was looking for.”
Eating the goods at a Nagano tofu shop. Source: Emiko Davies
Another only-in-Japan experience that Davies loves is depachika – the dazzling food mecca you'll find on the bottom floor of any department store. "My grandfather, who I inherited my love of satsuma-age (fish cakes) and mochi from, would come into Tokyo to shop at the department store where you can buy the best of these things in their basement food hall. I still love to go there to pick up things like my favourite furikake and rice crackers to take home in my suitcase and bento or onigiri to eat later that day,” she says.
The author has written in great detail about her favourite places to eat in Japan in her excellent – as has fellow cookbook author in . Busuttil Nishimura cites the wagashi (traditional Japanese confectionery) at , Tokyo, as present-worthy purchases. "The flagship store in Ginza is the place to go for the full range of seasonal mochi and sweets," Busuttil Nishimura writes.
Another only-in-Japan experience that Davies loves is depachika – the dazzling food mecca you'll find on the bottom floor of any department store. Source: Emiko Davies
For the ultimate sugar rush in Japan, consider . Tokyo-based writer recounts a revelatory example of the shaved-ice dessert in her upcoming book, . Although that particular serve, saturated with "a sweet-tart grape and red wine syrup", was a limited-edition creation, it's still worth cooling off with this Japanese specialty in any circumstance.
Leow says, "I always recommend trying kakigori – not the snow cone-style stuff drenched in lurid-coloured syrups, but the towering, delicate mountains of ice you might call 'designer' kakigori, which has become increasingly popular in the last 10 years. She thinks eating kakigori in Japan can change your perception of what shaved ice can be. "Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara are places where I've had some fantastic kakigori," she says.
An order at in Ginza – splashed with blood-red strawberry syrup, crowned with pistachio , and surrounded by an Earl Grey-flavoured bilberry compote – was a recent joy-filled highlight.
You might also find regionally specific creations elsewhere, like (Kagoshima-style shaved ice), which "has a passing resemblance to or in terms of the joyful, willy-nilly inclusion of all sorts of toppings", Leow adds.
Everything hinges on the ice.
Although kakigori looks like something a child would create in a daydream, it's also an astounding technical wonder. Leow remembers talking to Sōsuke Hirai at Nara's , who told her in passing that if there's a crack in any of their ice blocks, they send it back to the factory because it's "damaged goods". Hirai-san is obviously meticulous about his kakigori – but anyone aiming to execute the dessert properly needs to be.
"Everything hinges on the ice, which needs to be free of impurities and at the correct temperature as you're about to shave it. Too cold and the flakes are too rough and hard. Too warm and it becomes slush almost instantly," Leow says. The syrups and toppings need to be evenly saturated, and not too top-heavy or imbalanced.
“You need to gently pack the feathery flakes down with your hands every now and then to shape it, but too much pressure might cause the ice to clump too quickly," she adds.
"If you want to blowtorch it, that adds extra time to the creation process, which needs to be accounted for. All this happens in the space of a few minutes, and then it arrives in front of the customer. It's an ephemeral piece of art – you have just enough time to snap a photo and dig in before it starts melting."
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