One of the great things about traveling, is trying local cuisine!  While in Japan, Caitlyn and I managed to eat our way across Japan.  All the food was delicious!

Our first destination was Hokkaido, which is the second largest island and furthest north.  This island is the least developed of the four main islands, and gets quite cold in the winter.  There is a lot of agriculture which means there is fresh produce as well as fishing since the island is surrounded by ocean.

We stayed in Sapporo, which is the capital of Hokkaido.  Since we were there in June, we enjoyed many local grown vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, corn, etc.  The hotel where we stayed – the Nest Hotel, had an excellent buffet breakfast.  Breakfast became our main meal of the day for the three days we were there for the Yosakoi Soran Festival .  There were many kinds of fish and seafood, fresh vegetables and fruits as well as eggs, toast, etc..  One of our favorite foods was the corn chowder!

While attending the Yosakoi Festival, we enjoyed visiting many vendor booths.  The biggest surprise we got was when we bought  what we thought was fried chicken and it turned out to be fried squid which is very chewy- not my favorite!  One of my favorite vendor foods was the strawberry and banana crepe – yum!

We traveled a lot by train, so it was wise to buy food to take on the train for longer trips.  One of our food addictions became Vie de France.  This store is bakery heaven.  There is every type of baked good that you can think of – both sweet and savory.  Vie de France gained a lot of revenue from us, and we probably gained a pound or two from eating there so many times!  I give Vie de France an A+!

Hakone is near Mt. Fuji and we decided to try and go there in one day.  We changed trains 4 times and got on a bus to reach Hakone, only to discover that it was foggy and Mt. Fuji was shrouded in the clouds.  Hakone is a quaint little town and we did enjoy eating lunch at a little restaurant overlooking Lake Ashi.  We enjoyed delicious tempura and rice.  After lunch we boarded the Lake Ashi pirate ship and took a 30 minute ride to Togendai Port.  That was suppose to be the site to see Mt. Fuji, but the fog prevented that.  The ride back to Hakone-machi port became so foggy that visibility was zero.  Caitlyn and I felt like we were in the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean”.  All in all Hakone is a great little town, and we would advise spending a couple of days in that area instead of one.

Family Mart is a convenience store, and they are located all over Japan. I can still sing the jingle that plays as you enter the store!  Convenience stores have everything you could ever want or need, and were a great place to buy something to drink or eat, especially when traveling via train! We shopped in Family Mart many times over the many weeks we were traveling across Japan.  They are great stores!

Muf Muf is a locally owned tea and muffin shop in Senkawa.  The owner makes delicious muffins of various kinds.  Muf Muf is a great little place to go to unwind, enjoy something to drink and have a delicious muffin.  We ate there several times while in Tokyo.

The Japanese love noodles.  Caitlyn and I tried udon, soba and ramen noodles while in Japan.  Soba noodles are made of buckwheat and wheat flour.  They are served in hot broth or chilled with dipping sauce.  While in Yamagata, we enjoyed a locally owned Soba restaurant that was celebrating it’s 100th year of business.  The owners are mother and daughter.  Caitlynn and I both ate chicken soba in hot broth.  It was very good!  

Ramen is a thin wheat based noodle and pale yellow in color.  Japanese Ramen is nothing like the dry little packages of ramen that you buy in the USA.  Ramen is usually in a tonkotsu broth (pork broth), and are flavored, miso (fermented bean paste), shio (salt) and shoyu (soy sauce).  Miso is the flavor I am most familiar with, but enjoy all 3 kinds.

Udon are the thickest of the Japanese noodles and are a white wheat based noodles.  Udon is served both hot and chilled.  I personally prefer all three noodles served in hot broth.  

Cherries were in season while we were visiting Yamagata prefecture.  Caitlyn and I took a train and traveled to the mountain town of Yamadera.  We walked the 1000 steps to the top of the mountain to the Yamadera temple.  The scenery was beautiful and the weather the day we were visiting was perfect.  After climbing up and down the mountain, we stopped at a local shop and ate fresh cherry ice cream. It was creamy, cherry perfection!  The shop owner had cherries left over, so she gave us a big bag of cherries to eat on the way back to Yamagata.  They were delicious.  We saw hundreds of cherry trees while riding on the train loaded with ripe cherries!  While in Yamagata we bought cherries and took them back to Tokyo. There are both white and red cherries, but I prefer the red.

Bento is a box shaped container with different compartments.  The bento has rice, vegetables and meat – a Japanese lunch box.  Bento is a convenient meal to take while traveling.  Caitlyn and I enjoyed several different bento while riding trains. Some bento we sampled had shrimp, pork, egg or chicken.  They are a convenient meal on the go!

Kyoto is a beautiful city that typifies old Japan. We enjoyed Kyoto style eating which means small portions of many kinds of food.  While touring the city, we had lunch at a Kyoto style restaurant.  Our meal was served on a long plate with various kinds of seafood cooked tempura style. Our hotel also had a buffet Kyoto style breakfast, which was a great way to start the day.  I enjoyed sampling many different kinds of food – especially seafood!

Green tea and red beans are very popular in Japan.  They are used in many foods that aren’t common in the USA.  One of my favorite forms of green tea was the ice cream.  We found a little shop at the base of a temple that had homemade green tea ice cream.  It was by far the very best green tea ice cream we had while in Japan!  Red beans are used in candy and desserts.   I didn’t think I would like red beans as a dessert, but they are delicious.  I would highly recommend trying it!

Oyster farms are found all over Japan.  They “grow” the oysters in the ocean and the oysters take about 2 years to mature.  While we visited the island of Miyajima, we ate lunch at a local restaurant that served fresh oysters from their local oyster farm.  For the brave eater, you could order raw oysters, but we don’t care for the texture when the oysters are raw. So, we ordered fried oysters, and they were delicious!  

Mango is one of my favorite fruits, but it is often hard to find a good, ripe mango in Indiana.  During our visit to Okinawa, mangoes were in season and I tried every form of mango I could think of – mango waffles, mango smoothie, fresh mango – yum!

Sushi is a very popular food in Japan.  Since Japan is an island, and surrounded by ocean, seafood is a staple and is caught fresh daily.   One of my favorite places to eat sushi was a conveyor belt sushi bar. We ate at a sushi bar in both Tokyo and Okinawa.   In this kind of restaurant, you pay for each plate of food you eat.  The food goes by your table on a conveyor belt, so you can choose what is already there, or special order food that is delivered via the conveyor belt as well.  There is a spigot of hot water and green tea powder at each table, plus condiments for your sushi.  It was fun ordering all kinds of food, watching the chef prepare it and then send it to the table on the conveyor belt.  I personally don’t care for seaweed, so my favorite kind of sushi is the shrimp and rice sushi. When in Japan, you must visit the conveyor belt sushi bar – lots of fun and good eating!

Afternoon tea at the Tokyo Hotel was a lovely experience.  The hotel setting is on the gardens of a former Samurai home and was  a beautiful backdrop for a delicious tea time.  The theme of this afternoon tea was tropical food. Pineapple tea, and Coconut tea were two of the flavors I tried.  They were different , but very good!  The food was served on a three tiered china plate.  The savory sandwiches were on the bottom.  The center plate had various scones, and the top plate contained lovely and delicious desserts.  A portions were small, but by the time we ate all three tiers of food, we were comfortably full!  We stayed at the hotel about 2 hours, sitting, eating, and drinking tea. Following our tea time, we strolled through the beautiful gardens admiring all the lovely flowers, shrubs, stone carvings, temple, waterfall and pond with huge colorful koi fish.  It was a relaxing way to spend an afternoon in Tokyo!

Japan has a wonderful array of food and we did our best to try everything we could!  I highly recommend a food tour of Japan!