Eating in Japan: What You Should Know

EATING IN JAPAN: WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

For many people, food is one of the reasons they want to visit Japan in the first place.

And it's difficult to think of another country where eating can add quite so much to a holiday.

There are extraordinary restaurants, certainly, but that's only part of the story. A bowl of ramen at a counter, yakitori in a neighbourhood izakaya, a beautifully prepared ryokan dinner or an ekiben eaten on the Shinkansen can be every bit as much a part of experiencing Japan.

The difficulty begins when you start researching.

Suddenly there are Michelin stars, omakase counters, restaurants with only eight seats and thousands of recommendations telling you where you absolutely must eat.

Something that should be one of the pleasures of the holiday can quickly become another planning exercise.

We think there's a better way to approach it.

Not every meal in Japan needs to be planned.

In fact, we'd actively recommend that it isn't.

Japan has an extraordinary culture of specialisation. It's perfectly normal for a restaurant to concentrate on one type of food and spend years becoming exceptionally good at it.

That might be sushi, soba, tempura, tonkatsu, yakitori, unagi or ramen. The menu may be surprisingly short because the restaurant isn't trying to offer something for everybody.

It's trying to do one thing extremely well.

This also means that price isn't necessarily a reliable measure of how memorable a meal will be.

You can spend a considerable amount on an exceptional omakase dinner in Tokyo. The following evening, however, you might sit at the counter of a tiny restaurant and have something far simpler that you enjoy just as much.

Both belong in Japan.

The mistake is thinking that every dinner on a special holiday also needs to be an expensive dinner.

Some restaurants certainly require advance reservations, particularly small, highly regarded establishments with relatively few seats. If there's somewhere you particularly want to experience, it's worth researching its booking arrangements well before you travel.

For most meals, however, we'd leave considerably more freedom.

A dinner reservation doesn't only determine where you're eating. It can determine where you need to be beforehand and when you have to leave whatever you're doing. Fill too many evenings with reservations and something that should be enjoyable can begin to dictate the rhythm of the holiday.

Leave some evenings open and Japan becomes much easier to explore spontaneously.

An izakaya is particularly good for this.

Sometimes described as a Japanese pub, although the comparison isn't quite right, an izakaya is an informal place where drinking and eating happen together. Rather than ordering a conventional starter and main course, you'll usually order a succession of smaller dishes to share.

The food might include sashimi, grilled fish, yakitori, vegetables, tofu or fried dishes, depending on the establishment.

Some are large and lively. Others are tiny neighbourhood businesses with only a few tables or counter seats.

For visitors, they're also an excellent way of experiencing a style of eating that's part of ordinary life in Japan rather than something designed principally for tourists.

You don't necessarily need to understand everything on the menu.

Sometimes that's part of the fun.

Japanese department stores contain another of our favourite places to explore food.

Head downstairs and you'll often find the depachika, the basement food hall.

These can be extraordinary.

Counters sell sushi, sashimi, salads, cooked dishes, bento boxes, Japanese sweets, fruit, sake and regional specialities. They're interesting simply to wander around, but they're also extremely useful.

Before a train journey, for example, buying a good bento can turn lunch on the Shinkansen into part of the journey.

You'll also encounter ekiben, railway bento boxes sold at major stations. Many contain foods associated with the region in which they're sold, so choosing lunch can become another small way of experiencing the places you're travelling through.

Then there are Japan's convenience stores.

7-Eleven, Lawson and FamilyMart have become attractions in their own right on parts of social media. We wouldn't suggest travelling halfway around the world to live on convenience-store food, but the quality and range can certainly surprise British visitors.

They're genuinely useful for breakfast, snacks, drinks and those occasions when you simply don't want another restaurant meal.

There's another side to Japanese food that's worth understanding too.

Where you travel can influence what you eat.

Japanese food isn't one single national cuisine. Different regions have their own ingredients, dishes and traditions. Osaka is closely associated with foods such as okonomiyaki and takoyaki. Hiroshima has its own distinctive style of okonomiyaki. Hokkaido is particularly known for seafood and dairy produce, while other parts of Japan have specialities that may barely appear on menus elsewhere.

You don't need to plan a holiday around collecting regional dishes.

But food can be another way of understanding how Japan changes as you travel through it.

A ryokan introduces something different again.

At many traditional inns, dinner is an important part of the stay rather than simply somewhere to eat in the evening. A multi-course kaiseki meal may use seasonal and regional ingredients, with presentation, texture and the progression of the dishes all forming part of the experience.

For someone interested in Japanese food, a carefully chosen ryokan stay can therefore be as much about dinner as the room or the onsen.

When dietary requirements change things

This is where we'd be more cautious about simply arriving somewhere and choosing somewhere to eat.

Japan is becoming better at accommodating different dietary requirements, particularly in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, but understanding can vary considerably once you travel elsewhere.

One of the difficulties is that ingredients aren't always obvious.

Dashi, one of the fundamental stocks used in Japanese cooking, is commonly made using dried bonito fish. Something that appears to be a vegetable dish may therefore not be vegetarian at all.

Soy sauce presents a different problem because conventional Japanese soy sauce usually contains wheat. That means dishes which might initially appear suitable can be problematic for someone with coeliac disease.

If you have a serious allergy or medical dietary requirement, we'd strongly recommend carrying a clearly written Japanese translation card explaining exactly what you cannot eat. Where the consequences of a misunderstanding could be serious, relying entirely on an English conversation isn't something we'd recommend.

Vegetarian and vegan food in Japan

Vegetarian and vegan travel in Japan is considerably easier than it once was, particularly in the larger cities.

But there's an interesting contradiction.

Japan has a long tradition of plant-based Buddhist cuisine, yet many apparently vegetarian everyday dishes contain fish-based dashi.

One experience worth seeking out is shojin ryori, the cuisine traditionally associated with Buddhist temples. It avoids meat and fish and can introduce a completely different side of Japanese cooking, using ingredients such as tofu, seasonal vegetables and mountain plants.

As you travel away from the major cities, advance research becomes increasingly useful.

Travelling with coeliac disease

Japan requires particular care for travellers with coeliac disease.

Rice is fundamental to Japanese food, which can initially make the country appear straightforward. The complication is wheat appearing in soy sauce, marinades, sauces, broths and other ingredients where it may not be immediately obvious.

Soba needs caution too.

Despite being associated with buckwheat, many soba noodles contain a mixture of buckwheat and wheat flour. Juwari soba is made using 100 per cent buckwheat, although sauces and cross-contamination still need to be considered.

For someone with coeliac disease rather than simply a preference to avoid gluten, we'd take the requirement into account when planning the journey rather than trying to solve it meal by meal once in Japan.

Kosher and halal travel

Both require more preparation, particularly when travelling beyond Japan's largest cities.

Halal options have increased in the principal visitor destinations, and some hotels and restaurants can accommodate requirements when given sufficient notice. However, ingredients and preparation methods still need to be understood rather than assuming that a dish is suitable because it doesn't visibly contain pork.

Strictly kosher travel can be more complicated and may require suitable meals to be arranged in advance, with additional food carried for parts of the journey where appropriate options aren't readily available.

This is one of those occasions when a dietary requirement can influence the itinerary itself.

That's much easier to consider before the holiday than after you've arrived.

Leave room to discover something

Food is one of the areas where we think there's a real danger of over-planning Japan.

Have the special dinner.

Try kaiseki at a ryokan, sit at a sushi counter, explore a depachika and choose an ekiben before boarding the Shinkansen.

But don't turn every meal into an appointment.

Leave an evening when you can wander through the streets around your hotel and see what looks interesting.

Because eating well in Japan isn't about working your way through somebody else's list of the country's best restaurants.

It's about experiencing the remarkable variety of ways Japan eats.

And one of the meals you remember most may well be somewhere you didn't know existed until you opened the door.

‍