My Japanese Food Bucket List!

It's probably no surprise to those that know me that of all the research I did to prepare for my recent trip to Japan, food was the biggest priority! We love the cultural aspect of trying as many local foods as we can, both the traditional dishes and the so-popular-right-now ones! So by the time the trip began, I had a bucket list of over 30 different Japanese foods to try, both traditional and modern. 30 foods in three weeks? Challenge accepted!

I've split my list into two sections: savoury dishes and sweet treats. I enjoyed trying every single one of them: there are a couple I wouldn't be desperate to try again, but I'm already desperately missing a lot of them!

Savoury!

1. Shabu shabu / sukiyaki.  This was our first meal in Japan, right after landing in Tokyo, and it was such a fun introduction to Japanese food! Shabu shabu and sukiyaki both consist of a pot of broth kept boiling over a hot plate in the middle of your table.  You order a selection of thin slices of uncooked meat and put them into the broth to cook.  You can also throw in all sorts of things from the all-you-can-eat table, including a range of vegetables, udon noodles and wonton. The great thing about shabu shabu is that the more stuff you dump in the pot, the better it tastes as the broth soaks up all of the different flavours!  We chose a combination of shabu shabu and sukiyaki, with the two different broths served side-by-side in a big pot. We tried this at Nabe-zo in Asakusa, which you can book online!

2. Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo.  We didn't want to wake up at the crack of dawn to see the big tuna auction, but we did get to see a giant tuna close up (well, parts of it!) as well as trying all sorts of snacks.  We decided to take a tour of the market with a local guide, who really helped us put everything we saw into context: the market is so big and busy it can be intimidating and difficult to choose what to try, so I'd definitely recommend the tour we did, which lasted 90 minutes. 

3. Yakitori on Memory Lane.  We were really looking forward to trying yakitori - barbecued meat skewers - but wanted our first taste to be on Memory Lane, a nostalgic street in Shinjuku also known as 'Piss Alley' (not so inviting) or 'Yakitori Alley' (much more appetising!)  Here, you sit along a counter in a tiny restaurant with room for maybe 10 guests maximum, and order as many skewers as you can eat, which are freshly cooked in front of you.  You can also buy beer and sake, but the rule is you must buy a round of yakitori for every drink you order (not a bad thing!!) Just expect to leave smelling like a yakitori yourself - not so popular if you're taking the metro home like we did!

4. 'Volcano eggs' in Hakone.  A popular day trip from Tokyo, the Hakone area offers you the chance to take a cable car over a volcanic area, watch steam rising from the earth, and eat eggs boiled in hot pools in a volcanic basin. The sulphur in the water turns the shells black.  Did they taste just like normal eggs?  Yes. Was it still cool to eat them? Obviously.

5. Conveyor belt sushi.  I'm a sushi novice so I thought conveyor belt sushi would be a safer bet than an expensive set menu I might not like.  We loved it so much that we went to the same place in the town of Odawara two nights in a row! The different coloured plates represent the price of the sushi, so when you're done picking them off the conveyor belt and eating them, you just count how many of each colour you've eaten to get your bill! Most sushi train restaurants come with completely complementary free-flowing matcha tea dispensers at your table, too!

6. Tempura.  Patrick was on a mission for great tempura.  I'm not a fan of prawns so he kept those, but I went for the vegetable ones! We had some especially good tempura at Gonpachi restaurant in Tokyo, which was apparently Tarantino's inspiration for some scenes in Kill Bill.

7. Kaiseki.  A proper kaiseki meal (a series of small, elaborately presented courses) can set you back £500 and more, and we didn't want to go for a cheaper but mediocre alternative.  So instead I discovered Izama in Kyoto's Gion district, which offered a beautifully-presented set lunch menu for less than £20!! Mine came in lots of separate dishes and containers, each with its own style of presentation, so even though all the dishes came at once rather than one at a time like real kaiseki, it still felt very fancy!

8. Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki.  Okonomiyaki resembles an omelette but it's so much more than that: it usually features egg, cheese, pork, tempura flakes, squid pieces, seaweed flakes, and onions.  But in Hiroshima they take it one step further and add noodles! They cook them on a hot plate as you watch, and you also have a hot plate on your table to keep it warm as you eat.  You're supposed to cut off a little, put it on a plate, and then liberally douse it with sauce and mayonnaise. You can also add different ingredients, such as corn, more seafood, garlic, spring onions, and more. So delicious! We had ours at Nagataya.

9. Tonkatsu.  This was my most eagerly awaited dish, and I was quite picky about not choosing just any restaurant serving this pork dish.  Luckily, we discovered the highly-rated KYK on our last day in Kyoto, ordered the pork loin tonkatsu set meal and enjoyed every second of eating it.  A good tonkatsu should have super tender pork loin with a wonderfully crispy, crunchy panko breading.

10. Katsu curry. This one counts as a separate listing from the one above, because I wanted to try both simple tonkatsu and the rice and curry variety.  The curry tasted just how I expected it to taste, although the pork itself wasn't up to the same standards as at KYK.

11. Takoyaki.  These griddled balls filled with octopus that are crispy on the outside and gloopy on the inside were a surprise favourite of mine!  It's hard to describe the taste or the texture, but I just loved them! They usually come topped with seaweed, bonito flakes, and generous amounts of mayonnaise!

12. Ramen in a personal booth at Ichiran Ramen.  Ramen chain Ichiran is famous for its unique dining arrangement: you order and pay for your tonkotsu (pork bone broth) ramen at a machine outside the restaurant, get a coupon for what you ordered, and then sit in your own single-person booth.  You pass your coupon through a hatch in the front of your booth, and a few minutes later your bowl of ramen appears through the same hatch.  You can add extras to your basic broth - I would recommend the smoked pork!  We accidentally ordered too many portions of the pork at the machine, but it was meant to be because we couldn't get enough of it!

13. Udon and soba noodles.  These are two different types of noodle: udon is thick and made of wheat flour while soba is thinner and often made from buckwheat.  Udon was my favourite, especially when served in a broth with vegetable tempura added! The one below was from top-rated Hippari Dako in Nikko.

14. Nishiki Market in Kyoto.  Unlike Tsukiji in Tokyo, Kyoto's seafood market is one very long covered street, and you can enjoy all sorts of fish-based delicacies as well as other snacks and a range of sweet treats too.  We went for fried chicken, more takoyaki, tempura skewers, soy milk donuts, okonomiyaki, and the infamous octopus with a quail's egg unceremoniously stuffed inside its head.  Weirdly, the combination of octopus and quail egg worked quite well!

15. BBQ marbled beef.  We wisely made a reservation for the premium set menu at Matsusaka Yakiniku M, which I'd totally recommend to anyone.  We were sat in a booth with a screen that could be drawn across for complete privacy, and to contain the smoke coming from the beef cooking on the BBQ in the middle of our table! The premium course began with assorted appetisers, a beautiful bibimbap and kalbi beef.  Then came the marbled beef: four different cuts that we could cook ourselves, just a few seconds on each side and rare in the middle. We also had 'beef sushi', which was very thin slides of beef slightly seared and served on rice, like sushi.  We even got a special surprise crepe cake and matcha lava cake dessert for our anniversary treat! 

16.  Shinkansen bento boxes.  You can get bento lunch boxes at supermarkets, sure, but a Shinkansen bento is more special! You get them at Shinkansen train stations and they cost a bit more than your regular supermarket ones, but they come in fancy compartmentalised packaging often made of wood, and for some reason I find eating lunch so much more fun when you have to decide which little compartment to eat first!

17. Yuba. Yuba is, weirdly, the skin that forms on the top of boiling tofu. It can be used for all sorts of things, including as a seaweed-alternative in sushi. We had to try yuba at one of its places of origin, a restaurant called Zen in the historic town of Nikko where monks ate a lot of tofu as part of their vegetarian diets. We were especially impressed by a really sweet and tasty yuba-based dessert!

18. Onigiri.  This  is usually a triangular ball of white rice with a filling, usually seafood, and often wrapped in a dried seaweed sheet.  It's a great grab-and-go snack: we often had them for breakfast or as train snacks (on trains where you're allowed to eat, anyway!)

19. Kushi katsu. These are skewers of breaded and fried...well, anything. I tried some delicious quail egg kushi katsu at Hipparo Dako in Nikko, but this is a typical izakaya (pub) food that can be found anywhere.

Sweet and drinks!

1. An enormous kakigori.  Kakigori is a big pile of shaved ice flavoured with anything from condensed milk and bean paste to caramel or strawberry sauce.  The way the ice is shaved so finely makes it so light and fluffy, like eating clouds.  We opted for Pass the Baton in Kyoto's Gion district and weren't disappointed by the salted caramel kakigori that was bigger than a human head!! 

2. Sakura afternoon tea.  This was a non-negotiable, as we'd be in Tokyo during sakura (cherry blossom) season.  We pre-booked the afternoon tea at ANA Intercontinental Hotel, and were treated to a delicious spread of sakura-flavoured treats as well as exclusive ruby chocolate delicacies.  The tea was pretty much unlimited, and we worked our way through many flavours of fruit teas over the course of two hours! More information in this post!

3. Sakura everything! Being cherry blossom season, I was determined to try as many sakura-flavoured foods as possible! We found ice cream, macarons, donuts, even beer! I really loved the subtle, floral taste - unlike other sweet floral flavours like rose or violet, sakura has a hint of salt which balances the sweet perfectly! We just had to be careful because not all sakura-decorated packaging necessarily meant sakura-flavoured products inside.

4. Rainbow candy floss in Harajuku.  The candy floss from Totti Candy Factory is so popular that you now have to book a time slot to collect your treat! Visit the store when you arrive in Harajuku, go and explore, and then return during your slot to claim the most awesome candy floss you will ever taste!  It tasted even better that it looked!

5. Hanami dango.  A dango is a round dumpling made of rice flour, often with a red bean paste filling, served in balls on skewers.  But during cherry blossom season you can find hanami dango, the pink, white and green balls that are just begging to be eaten under the blossoms!  They are sold in packs at stalls near cherry blossom sites, but we found them much cheaper at the supermarket and they're literally the exact same thing!

6. Strawberry mochi.  I wanted to try this partly because they just look so darn adorable, but also because the strawberries in Japan are the sweetest you'll ever taste! Which probably explains why they're so expensive.  You pay a little more for the coveted white strawberries, but your normal red strawberry mochi costs less than £3. I found the one below at Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, but they were available in all sorts of random places!

7. Taiyaki.  This is a really popular cake in the shape of a fish, stuffed with red bean paste. We weren't really fans of the bean paste when we tried it, but you can also get them stuffed with other fillings including chocolate and custard, which we liked!

8. Kawaii food.  Kawaii roughly translates to 'cute' or 'adorable' and when applied to food it usually involves bright colours or, even, better, animals!  The animal donuts from Floresta Nature Donuts definitely count, as do these 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' monkey ice creams we found in Nikko!

9. Studio Ghibli themed food.  I enjoyed seeing the giant mechanical Ghibli Clock in Tokyo, but wanted to take it one step further by trying the 'My Neighbour Totoro' cream puffs from Shirohige's Cream Puff Factory.  It was a bit out of the way but quite near to the adorable Gotokuji Cat Temple. They come in lots of flavours - we tried strawberry cream and chocolate cream, both delicious and almost too cute too eat. 

10. Soufflé  pancakes.  These thick and jiggly stacked pancakes are really popular in Japan right now.  I don't like how heavy normal pancakes are so I had to try these, and I wasn't disappointed: they're so light I inhaled them like oxygen.  I went for a seasonal strawberry special which was delicious, and Patrick chose the tiramisu flavoured ones, from Burn Side St Cafe in Harajuku which was, as the name suggests, down a nice quiet side street off the insanely busy main Harajuku drag.

11. Parfait.  Parfait is very popular in Japan and they're usually pretty elaborately decorated, which can make them expensive!  We found this matcha and sakura flavoured parfait at a matcha cafe at Kyoto station of all places, and it was delicious! It featured strawberries, red bean paste, matcha and sakura ice cream, sakura jelly, and matcha biscuit.

12. Soft serve ice cream.  Another very popular treat in Japan, we ate a lot of this visually appealing stuff during our visit: the most popular flavours seemed to be matcha, black sesame and (in spring) sakura. The one below is matcha and black sesame, and found in the historical Higashiyama area of Kyoto.

13. Wagashi.  Wagashi refers to a range of traditional Japanese confectionary, made from natural ingredients.  They're essentially an art form, often coming in beautiful and delicate designs such as flowers.  You usually have one with your matcha tea.

14. Momiji manju. A maple leaf-shaped cake found only on and around Miyajima Island near Hiroshima, this comes traditionally filled with bean paste, but you can also get chocolate, custard, and other fillings. My favourite was a red bean paste and candied orange peel one. There are even a few shops where you can get them deep fried - I'd go for the custard-filled one in this case!

15. Matcha tea at a traditional tea house. You can get matcha pretty much anywhere in Japan, but we wanted a tea house experience and found one at the Kodaiji Temple in Kyoto.  We sat at a bench with a view of the temple's bamboo grove and got a cup of matcha prepared the traditional way, with a whisk.  It was strong enough to turn your tongue green. Matcha is usually served with a little wagashi sweet on the side.

16. Japanese craft beer. Japan is known for its Kirin beer (which, we discovered, is named after a mythical creature that can be found carved into many temples), but we also tried some craft beers in the historic city of Nikko, including a sakura-flavoured one!

Well...that list was longer than I expected!

I would say that while a lot of these were spontaneous finds, some of them definitely did need to be booked in advance as they were fully booked when we were there. These were:

-shabu shabu at Nabe-zo

-lunch at Izama

-sakura afternoon tea at ANA Intercontinental

-marbled beef in Osaka

A lot of places just don't take reservations, so it involved lining up for anything between 10 and 40 minutes. Places worth braving the queue for included:

-Ichiran Ramen

-Kakigori at Pass the Baton (you can register your email address at the door, and they'll email you when your table is ready, giving you time to explore Gion while you wait)

-Souffle pancakes at Burn Side St Cafe

-Hiroshima okonomiyaki at Nagataya

-Tonkatsu at KYK

-Rainbow candy floss at Totti Candy Factory (for a 100 yen deposit you can get a time slot ticket, leaving you free to explore Harajuku while you wait)

Now please excuse me while I go and pine for Japanese food!