Japanese Cuisine

Depachika roughly translates to “an underground floor of a department store”, but it is much more than just a location. Not to be confused with an ordinary supermarket, a depachika, as is the case...

No conversation about Japanese food can go without mentioning sushi, since the popularity of this particular seafood dish has made waves around the world. As mainstream as sushi is within the global vernacular, you...

Few food symbols are as iconic as the golden, crispy batter-covered shrimp tempura. In Japanese kanji the “ten” in “tempura” uses the character for “heaven”, and the addition of this traditional cuisine to the...

Seafood has always been a staple of the Japanese diet thanks to the bountiful ocean that surrounds the island country, and unagi (eel) is no exception. Unagi harvested from freshwater is prepared in a...

Of the top four culinary superstars which emerged during Japan’s Edo period, soba was the first to grace the table. Soba is actually the Japanese word for buckwheat, the main ingredient of the popular...

Located at the foot of Mt. Zao, Kaminoyama-shi thrived as a castle town and a place for travelers to rest as they traveled along the Ushu-kaido, one of the routes established to connect Edo...

Located at the heart of Fukushima-ken, Inawashiro-machi is a town at the foot of Mt. Bandai. To its south side are the clear waters of Lake Inawashiro and to the north is Mt. Bandai....

Morioka, a historic town at the foot of Mt. Iwate, is reachable in two hours by JR Shinkansen train from Tokyo. Maybe because it thrived as a castle town in the Edo period, the...

Situated in Asakusa, Sensoji is an attraction that paints a perfect picture of what the bustling streets of Tokyo’s old town area were like during the Edo Period. Chonin, a class of townsmen including...

Forests in Tokyo? Impossible – you might think, but it’s very possible. Two hours west of Shinjuku, lies the Nishitama area, part of greater Tokyo. Now, to many Tokyo residents, Nishitama is nothing special...