I came to Tokyo on a business trip, but pretty much all I remember is the eating. I’m thinking of posting it bit by bit. The first place I went on day one was Hatsushima, a small izakaya in Shinbashi. It…
Restaurant Hara is a French restaurant in my neighbourhood. It seems to have opened only about a month ago, but it’s always full, so I made a proper reservation and went with a friend. Wine and glasses …
I’ve put together the things I picked up at the Arita Ceramics Fair, mostly for the record. Nothing special… though. A plate with a soft bluish tint I impulse-bought this to serve my stir-fried ch…
We left Arita at 3 p.m. I figured leaving around then would get us there by evening, but I got that wrong. Past Fukuoka there was a traffic jam that dragged on for about 70 km. It would’ve been a lot eas…
The day after hitting Fukuoka, I headed to Arita, famous for its porcelain fair. It’s in Saga Prefecture, but geographically it’s closer to Sasebo. It’s pretty deep in the hills, so I wondere…
For dinner in Fukuoka I picked Kiharu, an izakaya famous for its saba (mackerel) dishes. It’s not far from Nakasu. Maybe it’s because I’ve turned into a middle-aged guy, but lately I keep cra…
After lunch I went back to the hotel in the late afternoon, took a nap, and headed out again in the evening. Maybe because Dontaku was over, things had calmed down a lot, but it was still Golden Week, so the y…
In Japan, pretty much every neighbourhood has at least one good place for eel, tonkatsu and sushi. Partly for that reason, and partly because it isn’t eel season right now, I didn’t particularly wa…
I’d just arrived in Fukuoka and had drunk a bit too much the night before, so breakfast obviously had to be tonkotsu ramen. After some thought about where to go, I headed to the Ichiran in Nakasu-Kawabat…
After Shimonoseki, the next stop was Fukuoka. During Golden Week, Hakata is famous for a huge festival called Dontaku. Not that I had much interest in the festival itself, but schedule-wise there wasn’t …
To keep the high from the whale meat I had at lunch going, I headed to a whale-cuisine specialist I’d bookmarked in advance. As is so often the case with places like this, it was tucked into a corner of …
I think wandering around unfamiliar streets might be the real joy of travel. A place that’s everyday life for someone, where they make their living, and maybe the hometown they miss… I want to see …