My Trip To Japan...Via Food
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Here it is my friends! I visited Japan a few months ago and I still have friends asking me about my trip. So, why not show everyone my trip to the land of the rising sun via the food I ate there. Long story short, I ate a lot of ramen.
Our first day in Japan was pretty low key. My travel buddies(Westin and Danny) and I arrived late in the day and spent the evening looking for our AirBnb apartment. Here is a tip for you young intrepid travelers out there; do some planning before looking for strange apartments in a foreign country. That is…unless you crave adventure. After finding our place, we ended up walking to a grocery store and bought some quick meals, which means no pictures.
Hiroshima
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We went to Hiroshima on our first full day and spent most of the afternoon at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. If you are in Hiroshima you should definitely check it out; it was sad but very informative. We hit up a small restaurant afterwards and I had my first bowl of authentic Japanese ramen. It was delicious. I don’t often eat soup but this hit the spot and I didn’t feel like I was going to die afterwards.
Osaka
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Dotonbori! What better place to spend your evening after a day of strolling trough the horribleness of the atom bomb. Dotonbori is THE tourist spot in Osaka. It reminded me of time square but with more people and tons of food stands. I decided to sample some Gyoza and Takoyaki. Gyoza is fried pork dumplings and takoyaki is…umm…cooked batter with pieces of diced octopus. I liked the gyoza. The takoyaki was…well…an experience. I heard about it on a travel video I watched before the trip. They promised it was delicious. They lied. I like fired batter and I don’t mind octopus, but the two together did not work out for me.
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The next day, we needed to kill some time before our train to Kyoto so we stopped at a tiny restaurant close to the station. The proprietor didn’t speak any English so I quickly pointed to the first thing that I could recognize; chicken! It was a fried boneless thigh with rice and topped with egg and dried seaweed. The chicken was on point; the rice was delicious; the seaweed, however, was way too fishy. I can deal with fish from time to time but I am not too fond of its pungent smell. The seaweed was all about that smell.
Kyoto
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We got into Kyoto, walked around aimlessly looking for the house we booked and finally, found a place to eat. It was a little corner restaurant about a quarter mile from the house. Guess what I got? Ramen! Except this time is was ramen with fried chicken. I was a little surprised at the amount of fried foods I was encountering in Japan; I was under the impression that this was a healthy eating culture. Healthy or not, the chicken was great. The ramen was a little more flavorful than the bowl I had two days before. Two thumbs up.
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Let me get this out of the way, that stick next to the bowl of tea is not butter. It is a weird sweet wafer thing with a sweet filling. Not my cup of tea!(see what I did there?). We had this little refreshment on our day trip to Arashiyama forest. We took a detour away from all the tourists into a secluded garden. If you every find yourself in Kyoto, go to Arashiyama, then go to the garden. It was very peaceful and the views were amazing. Plus you get a bowl of green tea and a little sweet wafer!
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After spending the day at Arashiyama, we went looking for a proper restaurant. Danny read about a nice little place with an owner that spoke some English. So we tried to find this place. We somehow ended up in some random coffee shop. After a quick discussion, we regrouped and walked next door and there it was. The place was smokey and very much a dive. In other words, exactly what we were looking for. We shared a big plate of wild boar with an assortment of pickled vegetables. Oh… and some grasshopper. So yeah, that was different. The barbecued boar was delicious. The grasshoppers were crunchy and interesting. I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought if I didn’t know they were grasshoppers. But I did know and they grossed me out a little. But hey, when in Rome right(eh…Japan)?
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We also got a bottle of sake(right), and after schmoozing with the owner, we got a second, nicer bottle(left). Both were great. It was my first time drinking authentic sake. Great experience.
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Our second full day in Kyoto was all about the shrines and temples. That meant a lot of walking. In fact, we averaged about 13 miles a day of walking during this trip(according to my fitbit). What better way to replenish your energy than a bowl of ramen. You might be asking; what is your deal with all the ramen? Well, this was not on purpose. Just about every place we went to in Kyoto served ramen. Hopefully you can tell by now that I am willing to try most things. The reason for all the ramen was simply because ramen was everywhere. This bowl was good although it was not much different that the other bowls I had. The egg was a nice touch and of course more chicken.
Tokyo
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We got up the next day, packed our things and took a bus to the rail station. We got into Shinjuku after a nice ride on the Shinkansen and of course, we were all starving. We had about an hour until we could check into our apartment so we wandered the streets looking for a place to eat. We found CoCo Curry House. Yes, this is a picture of curry and I know what you are thinking. It does indeed look awful. So how did it taste? Well, you know that annoying friend you had while growing up that would always say “Don’t knock it till you try it”? Well I am going to be that guy for a minute because this brown and yellow concoction was delicious! It was rice, curry, eggs and two salmon cream croquettes. Maybe it was because we were all starving and this was the only thing open at the time, but it was great. I would equate this meal to drunk diner food.
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As you probably know Tokyo is expensive so we decided as a group to spend our money doing different things around the city and only splurge on food once or twice. This meant we walked to the local grocery stores for most of our meals. I chose not to capture those meals since they were simple bento box meals. What I did take a picture of was our little trip to Tsukiji fish market. Tsukiji is the largest fish market in the world and a huge tourist hot spot. We made our way to this restaurant and grabbed some sushi for breakfast.
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The place was cramped and the wait was long, but as soon as we sat down and saw the chef go to work, we knew this place would be legit. Everything was in Japanese and since I knew little about sushi I just picked a plate based on the pictures.
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The plate consisted of a few maki rolls and several types of nigiri including tamago(egg). Although I don’t eat a lot of sushi, this was easily the best I have ever had. I am glad I got sushi in one of the freshest places to get it in the world.
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I don’t remember too much about this meal. I think I had this on our last full day. It consisted of rice, pork, eggs and cheese. It is worth noting that I did not see alot of cheese in Japan so I had to ask Danny if that was in fact cheese on top. The meal was ok. I do remember getting served water in a cup that tasted like it was mostly used for coffee. It was very unpleasant, but oh well. The last meal I ate in Japan was at the airport. It was a completely forgettable teriyaki rice bowl. To be fair, I was a bit aggravated because some guy sneezed on the back of my leg. What better way to end my trip.
Oh…there was this…
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We visited a Mexican restaurant in Roppongi. I didn’t take any pictures of the food because…well..lets put it this way. The burrito I got was described on the menu as “a mexican spring roll”…so…yeah, not so authentic.
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