Japan – Part Two (the food)

By Suleiman Banian, aged 55 1/2

There were so many things I was particularly excited to experience when we went to Japan. The madness of their urban areas, the serenity of their temples, mountains and countryside, the efficiency of their bullet trains and transport systems. The aspect that excited me the most, though, was their food culture.

Our trip was not a gastronomic odyssey. I would have loved us to have been able to eat sushi and sashimi until we couldn’t breathe or see out, but time and budgetary constraints prevented us from achieving this. It’s definitely a dream though to return one day and just focus on eating our way around the islands.

Surprisingly we didn’t take as many pictures as we could have done, so we don’t have lots of Instagram-worthy pics. I think we were just so bowled over by lots of what we saw and it just didn’t feel right to be snapping away at everything. But I hope the images shared below give you a tiny flavour of how diverse and enjoyable the food was there.

At the train station at Narita Airport we encountered our first convenience store. It was small but absolutely overwhelming. We tried the whipped cream and blueberry sandwich later in our trip and it was surprisingly goo … edible. They got the balance right so the blueberry was tart and the cream was not too cloying, but unsurprisingly it was just very soft so it didn’t feel filling. Perhaps we should have tried the ones with whole fruit (like strawberries) in them. 

The onigiri – the triangles of nori seaweed filled with rice and other toppings on the top shelf here – became the staple snack or lunch for us. Anisa and I ate it twice a day to the point of being sick of it! Favourite flavours were (in order): tuna mayo, salmon, bonito flakes, and pickled plum. There is something about good tuna mayonnaise that makes it unbeatable IMO.

Near our first Tokyo hotel was a supermarket with staggeringly large displays of everything, especially tomatoes and strawberries. The colours and range were overwhelming, especially coming from Bali where the choice is much more limited and never opulently presented.

Snacks for the journey, anyone? Squid which is smoked and then sweetened? Cheese sandwiched between cod? Or how about spicy squid legs grilled and dried? On my next trip I want to try all the veggie and fish-based ones.

On our first crazy night in Tokyo, Mahnaz found this halal wagyu beef joint for our little carnivore. Not sure the wagyu is shown off to its best when cooked until it shrivels and is placed on top of the ramen, but the whole thing was pleasingly spicy. There were a surprising number of halal food places in Tokyo, perhaps reflective of the huge numbers of tourists that continue to visit the capital post-COVID. The server was a Bangladeshi man whose second choice uni was Tokyo and after failing to make it to the US he ended up here. Might have been the right decision, all things considered …

Nishiki Market in Kyoto was so nice to walk around. We sampled the shrimp, crab, octopus and sea eel at this stall, and all were superb and tasted fresh.

We tasted something similar to the above – but which I won’t post a pic of because it will make me heave – which was some waffle batter put in a waffle maker and shaped like a fish, with a sweet filling. They had run out of the ones filled with pistachio crème or chocolate, so the only option was one with the dreaded red bean paste. To make it more appealing, it was served with a big hunk of cold butter. This would have been much better.

There were stalls in every city selling chocolate-covered fruit. The strawberry and chocolate was loved by Anisa, but I will always argue that banana somehow works better. It shouldn’t but it does. Strawberry and chocolate are both wonderful in their own right, but neither rivals cherries or raspberries in terms of being the perfect partner for chocolate.

A typical selection of foods that we had for breakfast. The pastries often had red bean paste which is just never a nice taste for me, it always promises sweetness but is ultimately disappointingly bland. They love their milk puddings, which is very much like a crème caramel and was lovely. The bread was milky, eggy, sweet and divine. The packets tell you how many slices they contain which is a simple but useful touch.

Okonomiyaki, a cabbage and wheat flour pancake stuffed with goodies and cooked on a grill in front of us. It’s a delicacy from Osaka, the food capital, but is available everywhere and was also recommended to Mahnaz by her friend Rachel. They had veggie versions as well as shrimp, cuttle fish, oyster, beef or pork. Ours were topped with delicate bonito tuna flakes that move thrillingly with the residual heat.

The Japanese love KitKat. Read more about it here. The sake version is very popular with tourists. Just to clarify, it’s not a bottle of sake flavoured with KitKat, but vice-versa.

A convenience store selling a 4L plastic bottle of whisky called Snazz. Classy.

Their vending machines sold a bewildering array of drinks including lots of strong coffees, and whisky in a tin.

The Japanese love their baked goods, as shown by this hungry diner in Hiroshima. All the major train stations and shopping malls have amazing bakeries and food stores that you can spend hours in. The bakeries all had elaborately topped doughnuts and croissants and match any of the bakeries you see in London.

I was not a fan of matcha before I went, and although not fully converted I’m now proudly matcha-neutral. I still maintain that the Kinako French toast with soft-serve matcha ice-cream (at Shack Fu Yu in London) is the best matcha dish I will ever have (somehow the ice-cream there complements the toast which is fudgey like a cake in a way that defies description). But this ice-cream was pretty fab too.

Holidays somehow feel like a carte blanche to eat industrial quantities of ice-cream, and we took advantage. My go-to flavours are always coconut or coffee, and lemon sorbet if I’m feeling fruity.

I was fascinated with the varieties of Haagen-Dazs sold there that we don’t see in the UK.

The Milk – the main ingredient comes from Hokkaido which is where the milk is apparently renowned. Unsurprisingly it tasted … milky, like eating frozen cream.

Really wish I had tried this one!

Am not a big cheese fan so swerved the rich fromage, but the custard pudding flavour was gorgeous. It was like having a crème brulee ice-cream. I always thought the Japanese weren’t big on dairy and preferred soya, and I know their low rates of certain cancers used to be partly attributed to this. But they’re hopelessly hooked on ice-cream from what I can make out.

Other street foods: the tornado potato was predictably fantastic (we had it with the garlic flavouring) and we could easily have had several apiece.

Anisa was desperate to try this viral strawberry sensation and it was great: the strawberries were juicy, and the sugar crunch complemented it. I like the fact I have two young Japanese women sampling said food in the background for extra authenticity!

And some other items just defy description. I mean, even I would draw the line at eel head, cartilage or internal organs…

So, it’s cheese AND potato AND cake AND condensed milk???

We sadly didn’t have time to try the dorayaki (sweet, filled pancakes). Incidentally, eating and drinking while walking out and about is positively frowned upon, so generally you have to finish your food directly outside the food establishment.

We also ate at a number of different international restaurants, mainly because they were cheaper and offered meat that we could eat. These included:

1. A Moroccan restaurant where we ate tagines. The owner came to Japan in the late 90s and married a Japanese woman, and they run this place together. Like many establishments there was a minimum spend despite (or because?) it being virtually empty.
2. An Italian trattoria in Tokyo where the front-of-house didn’t attempt to hide how much he disliked tourists. He barely gave us menus or cutlery, and then turfed out an American couple with a pushchair only to give the table to some locals a few minutes later.
3. With our friends Zanna and Vita we ate at an Italian restaurant (that closed at 9:30pm on a Friday!) and a Pakistani restaurant on our last night. I don’t know why I was surprised to see so many staff from the Indian sub-continent in shops as well as restaurants. Japan just feels so alien I’d assume that they would want to go to North America or the UK, but there are lots making their home in Tokyo especially.

We did eat at a halal wagyu place in Kyoto in a traditional room on the floor. The trick apparently is to coat the meat in egg before cooking to your satisfaction. Like all places in Japan where you get miso soup served to you, it is always sublime.

On our last day we went to the main fish market at Toyosu. All the fish trading had been done at dawn, but they specialise especially in tuna, mackerel and salmon. It was great to walk around and learn about the teyari (the hand gestures that are used as shorthand on the trading floor). We then had a sumptuous sushi feast where the fish was cut fresh and prepared in front of Anisa and Vita. This was my plate and only the rather chewy and tasteless orange sea urchin (bottom right) was a bit of an acquired taste. The rest was incredible, a real highlight.

To finish off, some bizarre shop names that I have to share …

ChocolateBoldItalic – a café in Kyoto

Rope Picnic – not any old rope picnic, but a rope-ay picnic …

ChocoZap – why this name for a 24-hour gym?

3CoinsOoops! – I give up.

Published : 14th June 2025