As always, our trips are as much about food as they are about the travel. And Japan was a veritable feast of great cuisine. In many of the cases below, the pictures do most of the talking.
One of favourite meals was in fact one of the strangest and cheapest. On our first night, wandering the alleys and lanes of Osaka, we stumbled upon a long line of locals going up some stairs and into what we assumed was a restaurant. This looked like as good as any hint of good food, so we joined the queue. During our 20 minutes or so in the queue, we had to inform an attendant that there would be two of us dining. Eventually we were ushered through the door only to be introduced to a vending machine! Some confused looks and pointing finally to us to the realisation that we were to order our meal from the vending machine. The restaurant specialised in ramen, and from the vending machine you selected your order and then made a number of selections about how you wanted your ramen: how strong the flavour; how rich the soup; how much garlic, how much spring onion; and how much "special sauce". Taking our tickets from the vending machine, we were then ushered around the corner to a bizarre line of individual booths. As we sat down in our booths, a hatch opened up in front of us and our tickets were taken from us from a mysterious individual behind the hatch. At this stage, this was one of the weirdest eating experiences we had ever had. However, the reward came 10 or so minutes later, when the most amazing ramen ever was presented to us back through the hatch. The broth was the most incredibly flavoursome I have ever had, the noodles tender, with a deliciously soft boiled egg that we had also ordered. It was a strange experience sitting within your booth, but we were so engrossed in our ramen you forgot where you were.
This ramen was firmly imprinted on our mind for the rest of the trip. So it was pretty exciting when we noticed a familiar sign at the end of the trip when we were in Tokyo. Apparently it is a chain renown for its special ramen broth, and it certainly didn't disappoint when we had to visit for the second time.
Our initial introduction to Kaiseki was at Koyasan at the monastery we stayed in. The monks are all completely vegan, and the idea is that you eat as they do, but they also seemed to have a liking for very bitter food, which literally become difficult to swallow towards the end.
However, we had the first of many amazing Kaiseki experiences at our accommodation in Takayama. This very unassumingly looking inn presented us with one of the more memorable dining experiences of our life. Arriving to the dining hall in the evening (which we had to ourselves), a massive feast was awaiting us. It was some of the most amazing meals of our life.
An equally impressive Kaiseki was served up to us at our awesome inn in Tsumago in the Kiso Valley. There were lots of local specialties - including wasp larvae, which was actually quite tasty. Dish after dish came out over the night, and by the time the green tea sponge came out, we were stuffed! (You have to excuse the robe they insisted we dine in).
You might be suspecting already that I might have forgone my pescetarianism during this trip. The opportunity to taste some of the finest beef in the world was something I didn't think I should miss - and the Wagyu certainly didn't disappoint.
Our first experience came completely by chance. We were dining out in Kyoto and had already finished off a very nice meal and were enjoying the last of our drinks when a sizzling plate was whisked past our table. Our interest peaked, we tried to ask the waitress what it was without much success. So we just communicated that we would like to order the same to find out. Soon after, our own sizzling plate came to the table, with only four thin slices of beef. But oh my, this was beef like no other. It was so tender that it basically just melted when you put it in your mouth. And the taste was so rich and juicy. It was a true marvel. Of course, it was only when we tried to work out our bill at the end of the night that we found out it must have been approximately $80 for just those four slices! As we left, we also managed to find out what we had from one of the chefs - top grade Nagano Wagyu beef.
We then had Wagyu served up in a number of Kaiseki meals, all amazing, if not quite amazing as that first one. It was pretty obvious where the rich flavour came from when seeing the beef in butcher shops. It is so marbled with fat that some pieces look nearly completely white. The other great Wagyu experience came in one of the more unlikely of places. Walking down one of the streets in Takayama we came across a hole-in-the-way joint selling little strips of Hida Wagyu, another of the top grades. Sure beats the pie cart!
Of course, not to be outdone was some of the incredible seafood we had. The two most special seafood meals we had were from restaurants in two of the fish markets. The first was in Kanazawa where we were able to track down a restaurant famed for its Kaisen-don (sashimi on a bowl of rice). It must have come with nearly 20 different pieces of seafood - including raw squid and raw prawn and the famed Kanazawa snow crab - and even topped with gold flakes!
The most memorable fish market though was the Tsukiji market in Tokyo, astounding and depressing at the same time for the shear quantity of fish. A little guiltily we did go to one of the sushi joints that surround the market. By now we had worked out the best way to choose your restaurant, select the one with the longest queue. It took about 30 minutes to work our way through the queue, ordering before we went in. The sashimi certainly didn't disappoint - you can't help but understand why the Japanese are fanatical about their fish.
One of the more unusual market snacks we had was the Takoyaki, a specialty in Osaka. They are spherical balls of boiled octopus cooked in a soft and chewy batter. They are a little unusual to eat, especially when you try to eat them when they haven't cooled enough and you have to loll it in your mouth to try and stop them burning it. There was definitely a bit of an art to making them - the cook having to roll them as they cook to give them the shape and ensure all the batter is cooked - but I can't see them making the Weight Watchers recommended snack list.
Back on the noodle front, the udon and the soba wasn't outdone by the ramen. Though we were slow converts to the popular dish of cold soba. We saw it a couple of times on the menu and couldn't piece together how it could be appetising, until we were offered by a friendly fellow diner to try some why eating at an Izakaya bar. Coming with a dipping sauce, we were surprised how tasty it was and made sure we ordered it when we saw it next.
One thing we learnt was that there is an art to eating your noodles, and in particular, the all important slurp. There seemed to be number of techniques: there is the quick fire short slurps; the long hard slurp finishing with a snap (a favourite of old men); and of course, the polite tentative slurp of the tourists. But the longer you stay, the more comfortable you get with the slurp and start giving it a bit more of a go. Though, I could never quite work out when some of the Japanese men slurped when they were eating something that didn't even have noodles or a sauce to slurp!
On the subject of noodles, this brings us to the obvious need for chopsticks, at which Anna was initially hopeless a using. For days it looked like she was trying to pick up her food with a couple of tooth picks. She just could not get it right, despite all the coaching by myself. It wasn't until about a week in to the trip when an old chef showed her what to do (exactly the same thing that I had been showing her!) that she picked it up. Though we were both still well short of the expertise shown from the locals around us. The first time we had to try and eat a grilled mackerel with chopsticks we made a bit of a mess of it, only to look across from us to see a guy deftly picking out the meat like it was picking up peas. But we did get better, and by the end of the trip using chopsticks was like second nature.
Of course, blogging about Japanese cuisine wouldn't be complete without referencing the ridiculous displays of plastic food outside most of the restaurants. I'm not too sure the objective of these, as they do look ridiculous and in no way appetising. The most unappetising we saw was the spaghetti bolognese below, though anything brown looked more like the thing that comes at the end of your digestion rather than something you want at the start of it. The lengths some of the models went to was quite amusing though, we liked the glass of milk shown pouring into the iced coffee below!
Like a lot of things in Japan, the cuisine could range from the sublime to the somewhat bizarre. I enjoyed both.
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