Pack up your chopsticks! The culinary map of Japan is a carnival of flavour-forward specialties spanning every prefecture with unique ingredients, dishes, and experiences at every turn.
When visiting Tokyo or Osaka, classes in making sushi, soba, gyoza and ramen are plentiful, but to really sink your teeth into Japanese foodie culture, here are some extraordinary gastronomic experiences – featuring both regionality and seasonality – that are worth venturing out beyond the big cities for:
Hot Spring, Hot Pot
Beppu, Oita, on the beautiful southern island of Kyushu, is serene, inviting, and bursting with 2,900 vents of steam gushing 130,000 tons of water each day. This is a hot spring heaven known for its “hells” of bubbling ponds, where locals use the hot steam to cook their food. One renowned restaurant, Jigoku Mushi Kobo Kannawa, invites diners to fill baskets with three collanders of ingredients and lower them into a pit of sulfuric steam to elicit softness and sweetness. This yields the most glorious, fiery orange eggs, perfectly crunchy sweet vegetables, and a seafood medley of shrimp, scallops, squid and oysters steamed to their optimum integrity and flavour.
Dive into Delicious
The renowned Ama divers of Ise Shima bay in Mie dive into frigid water and return with buckets full of oysters, abalone, turban shell, sea urchin and seaweed. The Ama Diver experience in Osatsu Town invites guests to look out over the ocean while the Ama divers file in one by one. This mysterious band of women bear their signature cherubic smiles, carrying with them baskets of today’s catch. Sipping miso soup and indulging in sea urchin and rice, watch in amazement as they grill their treasures and serve their sampling of the sea.
Surf and Turf by the Sea
The Omicho Fish Market is known as “Kanazawa’s Kitchen”, because there is so much to eat and enjoy that represents the bounty of Japan’s cuisine from seafood to grilled meats. At the nearby Noto Shokusai Market, you can actually grill your own meat on the spot! Built on a wharf by the sea, market ingredients include the freshest shellfish and deep-sea fish freshly-caught in the morning, as well as a bounty of picture-perfect vegetables and succulent meats from across the Noto Peninsula. This gourmet experience is as market-fresh as you can get.
In Osaka you can take your fish-dish one step further at Zauo Namba Honten fishing restaurant where, once seated at your table, you cast a line to catch your own fish. Red Snapper and flounder swim in the water below. If you catch it, reel it in, and present it to the staff, you can order how you would like it prepared: sashimi, sushi, grilled, broiled or tempura-fried.
Udon, Heaven
Kagawa is Japan’s capital of udon noodles and is renowned for its Sanuki Udon: flat-sided noodles with a firm texture. There are four main ingredients: wheat for the noodles, salt, soy sauce and dried sardines for the broth. Upon arrival at the airport, let an Udon Taxi, driven by an udon specialist, whisk you directly to select udon restaurants. Along with his driver’s license, your guide has passed a handmade-udon test.
