Minami is a well-known onsen ryokan around here. Its food has such a good reputation that it has opened two separate branches nearby, plus one in Shinbashi, Tokyo. I once visited the Shinbashi branch, and the …
Every so often, work takes you to some high-end restaurant you never once thought of going to yourself. Horaiso is said to be a place used mostly by political and business bigwigs, but it doesn’t even ap…
I’ve been on a sushi kick lately, making the rounds of the sushi places around here that are supposed to be good. Along the way I heard there was a decent sushi place in the hot spring town near my home,…
Chinese food is really well developed in Japan, probably because so many overseas Chinese have settled there. Thanks to that, the general standard of Chinese cooking is far above Korea’s, but since few p…
Tsuwano is a town with a long history. Around here it’s also called “Little Kyoto,” and tourists come flocking every day. Sweetfish (ayu) was the main reason for the trip, but since I’d…
This spring I had a truly wonderful ayu (sweetfish) dish at Acqua Pazza, an Italian place in Hiroo. It was so exquisite that it stayed on my mind for ages. So I went looking for a place in Japan that does ayu …
I dropped by Matsuya for a quick dinner. It’s a restaurant near the harbor that doubles as a guesthouse, and I came here once last winter for snow crab. This is how it looks at night.. They close early…
After my visit to Naniwa Sushi I got hooked on sushi for a while and went around the sushi places in town that are supposed to be famous. This was one of them, but it was just so-so for its reputation. It felt…
There’s a small sushi place near (?) where I live that caters to the locals. It’s a good spot I’ve wanted to introduce for a while, and this time I somehow got lucky and managed to bring my c…
This was my third visit to the Adachi Museum of Art. Having been there so often, the garden doesn’t move me the way it did the first time, but the artworks change every season, so there’s always so…
I’ve been to this place once before. It’s such great value for money that whenever I get a craving for meat, it’s where I end up without fail. Sukiyaki set for two Plenty of ingredients. S…
Ho Chi Minh City is much bigger than Hanoi, with about twice the population. With the legacy of the French colonial era still around, the streets and buildings are on the refined side. It’s more internat…