Adventures in Japan Part 1: The Food

It's been a while since I've posted - and for good reason. We spent a couple weeks in Japan in September/October, taking an adventurous break from a summer of doing boat projects, and came home to a disaster zone - Hurricane Helene hit Florida during the last few days of our trip. We had been living at my dad's house while making repairs/upgrades to Altair, and his house was flooded with four feet of seawater during Helene. Thankfully he had evacuated, and our cats were staying with my mom who lives inland, so everyone was safe, but his house and much of our belongings were destroyed. We were effectively made homeless since my dad's house was made unlivable and the boat was still a construction site and in no condition to live on either. Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Milton hit and the high winds significantly damaged our boat, necessitating more repairs before we can leave on our cruise to the islands. So, the past two months have been a whirlwind of constantly moving ourselves and our cats from one temporary home to another while helping my dad clean up his house and trying to get the now-much-longer list of boat projects done on Altair. I'll elaborate more in another post, but in the meantime I wanted to post about a happier topic - our wonderful trip to Japan!

I've said for a while that my bucket list is one line long - go to Japan and eat ALL the food. Now that we've checked off that box and eaten everything we could get our hands on in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hiroshima I either need to think of a few more things to do or start picking out a coffin. While I decide, here are some highlights of the food and drinks we either loved or barely managed to choke down in Japan!

Just walking around would make us hungry because the Japanese restaurants employ a wide variety of super-realistic plastic food models to lure you in. Some were mouth-watering, and others were, well, three assorted kinds of raw horse meat.

I have to admit, I was obsessed with these models. I would have bought a suitcase full of them if I could have.

Sushi of course didn't disappoint and required us to expand our palates a bit- even raw chicken was on the menu! For a special treat we had an omakase experience at Takumi Sushi Owana, a tiny restaurant in Tokyo that seats up to eight people at a time at the sushi bar. The chef and owner, Kenji Oana, was charming and funny as he served us so many raw and cooked fish dishes. I got so full that my facial expression gave me away - at one point he reassured me that there were only a few courses left and that he would go light on the rice for me!

For our wedding anniversary, we stayed at a ryokan (basically a traditional Japanese all-inclusive hot spring resort in the countryside) called Hotel Kaneyamaen where they fed us what seemed like an endless array of very fancy dishes each night. Here is the menu for our second night there:

It's a good thing we stayed for two days, because it wasn't until the evening of the second day when Mt. Fuji finally emerged from the clouds, which we could see from our balcony.

In Kyoto we decided that we should resolve one issue that had plagued us the entire trip - our complete lack of knowledge about sake. We booked a tour of a sake factory as well as a tasting experience with a sake sommelier that made us at least knowledgeable enough to describe what we did and didn't like in a sake. I preferred the cheap, less polished sakes while Ian liked the more middle-of-the-road options. Neither of us is a high-brow sake connoisseur, which boded well for our bank account balance for the rest of the trip.

When not drinking sake, we visited many of Japan's amazing cocktail bars. One of my favorites was a bar in Tokyo called The Auditorium that had a huge vinyl collection and makes cocktails inspired by songs - then they play that song for you while you enjoy your drink. I of course picked a cocktail inspired by a Japanese yacht rock song, and both the song and drink were great.

Another highlight was Bar Trench, which was very touristy but for good reason - their takes on traditional cocktails using Japanese ingredients were inventive and delicious.

I wish I had stolen more than one coaster from here. One more reason to go back to Japan!

Obviously after all that drinking we were in need of a hangover cure, and what better cure than ramen and a little hair of the dog?

If that didn't do the trick then it was off to the ubiquitous 7/11 for some really weird snacks.

And since Japan was experiencing a brutal heat wave, keeping temperatures in the mid-90's for most of our trip, what we drank more than anything else was the ubiquitous Japanese sports drink Pocari Sweat, our savior on sunny days!

As a native Floridian it pains me to admit that Pocari Sweat is even better than Gatorade. Sorry!

We loved Japan and I will post more about our adventures there later, but the cuisine was the main reason we travelled halfway around the globe and we were not disappointed!