More than living up to its name, this 296 meter building is Japan’s tallest after Tokyo Tower, hosting offices, a hotel, restaurants and shopping spaces. One of the world’s fastest elevators will rush you to the 69th floor in just forty seconds, where you’ll enjoy spectacular views from the Sky Gar...
Buddhism had a profound impact on the Japanese diet, and from the 7th century onwards the consumption of animals was subject to a succession of prohibitions. These varied according to time and place but the general effect was that the common diet contained very little meat.
In Kyoto, both the cul...
The Yokohama Raumen Museum is another food theme park, this one devoted to one of Japan’s true obsessions, the now world-famous noodle soup called ramen. The museum’s odd spelling of ramen is intentional, an old fashioned pronunciation that sounds nostalgic to Japanese visitors.
The museum docu...
Beer Garden or Biergarten? No one seems to be able to make up their mind, but don’t worry about it too much. The important thing is the place itself, the very epicenter of Japan’s truly massive beer culture. In 1876 Seibei Nakagawa, recently returned from studying the brewer’s art in Germany, was ...
Tsukemen is cold ramen-style noodles with a dipping sauce on the side. The version most popular in Hiroshima, typified by shops like Bakudan, uses an angry red, fiery dipping sauce that can be adjusted from relatively mild to idiotic. Many Hiroshima natives claim this as a local dish. Many peopl...
The name Odaiba means fort, revealing the origins of what has become one of Tokyo’s most thriving tourist destinations. In 1853, shortly after Commodore Matthew Perry’s alarming expedition to Japan, the Tokugawa Shogunate constructed a series of island batteries to guard the entrance to Tokyo Bay. I...
Some time in the eighties, and into the nineties, sushi suddenly became a status dish in North America. Similar to Wine Appreciation for an earlier generation, sushi became almost overnight a culinary shibboleth separating the in-crowd from the In-N-Out crowd. Although the situation is improving dai...
Buddhism had a profound impact on the Japanese diet, and from the 7th century onwards the consumption of animals was subject to a succession of prohibitions. These varied according to time and place but the general effect was that the common diet contained very little meat.
In Kyoto, both the cul...
Pontocho is less a neighborhood than a single, long cobbled alley running one block west of the Kamogawa River.
It is, famously, one of Kyoto’s most appealing districts, but really only shows its best face at night, when the cobblestones gleam in the soft light of traditional lanterns, and the na...
Onomichi ramen has become very well-known among ramen fans. The soup is made with a base flavored with chicken, fish stock, and vegetables. The noodles are added the stock, along with slices of pork, spring onions, and bamboo shoots, and bits of pure pork fat are added just before it’s served. S...
One of the signature dishes of Hiroshima, the local okonomiyaki (the name means ‘grilled the way you like it’) differs from its Kansai area counterpart by being prepared in layers, rather than mixed together in a jumble. Hiroshima style okonomiyaki is a thin crepe topped with layers of noodles, vege...
Following the Meiji government’s adoption of municipal districting, Morioka was one of Japan’s first cities. Once home to the mysterious Emishi, a non-Japanese people probably related to (or even identical with, no one is certain) the Ainu of Hokkaido, by the end of the Heian era the area was under ...
Udon noodles, silky and smooth, are one of Japan’s best-loved snacks. And in the minds of many an aficionados Kagawa Prefecture’s Sanuki udon is the best of the lot.
Udon is a simple food, just wheat flour, salt and water, but somehow the noodlemakers of Kagawa manage to turn out a dense, wonder...
The area known as shita-machi, or downtown, is the spiritual heart of Tokyo that includes Asakusa, Ueno and other neighborhoods. It’s also home to one of Tokyo’s most characteristic tastes, monja-yaki. In the same way that people in Osaka and Hiroshima love their okonomiyaki, many people who grew up...
Quick! Get that Shrimp!
A more relaxed way to enjoy Japan’s most famous dish.
At a kaiten sushi restaurant, you can relax in your booth while the food glides by your table on a conveyor belt. And not just sushi, but French fries and cheesecake too! Join Rachel and Josh as they stuff themselves for...
