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…
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…
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…
After going all out on the first day, I woke up in the morning feeling absolutely terrible. I’ve been doing strength training lately and eating a high-protein diet, so after pouring that much alcohol dow…
It’s not marked on the calendar, but in Japan there’s a holiday around August 15 that’s a lot like Korea’s Chuseok. With nowhere in particular to go during that break, I dropped by Kore…
Yesterday was Japan’s eel-eating day, a bit like Korea’s boknal. Just as we eat samgyetang on boknal, it’s meant to be a day to eat eel in summer and get your strength back, but really itR…
When I was planning this Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto trip, the very first restaurant I locked in was Il Ghiottone, an Italian place in Kyoto. It’s famous enough that you could call it Kyoto’s number one, and …