Food, glorious food!

A big benefit of living in Japan for five weeks has been all the delicious food I’ve consumed. I’ve written about some of it already — scrumptious udon on our first day in Manabeshima and my accidental visit to a fancy omakase sushi restaurant — but there have been so many meals worth remembering and sharing. Here are just a few standouts.

(1) Four of the many courses in our all-fish omakase dinner at the ryokan (Santora) in Manabeshima. (I highly recommend the food — everything was delicious, even if there was way too much!)

(2) Breakfast at the same ryokan. No such thing as eating light here…

(3) Selections from izakaya eating in Kurashiki and Takahashi. Every hole in the wall place has amazingly fresh sashimi. The fried fish was a bit of an adventure — you’re supposed to eat the whole thing (bones, fins, and all!). It tasted like a bunch of potato chips.

(4) My favorite cat cafe makes excellent tea and serves it in beautiful china. I happened to visit on their 10th anniversary, so the proprietress threw in free sorbet and cheesecake to celebrate!

(5) On our way to Bizen for pottery-making, we got lunch in the private dining room of a seafood restaurant! (This isn’t unusual in Japan — most restaurants have several private dining rooms — but it was new to me.) The terrifying part was the still-alive miniature octopuses that we were supposed to murder by frying them on a hot plate. They turned out to be quite tasty (though very chewy), but the whole ting made me squeamish.

(6) Two delicious meal sets during my wanderings: the first in Katsuyama (miso-glazed cod, rice, soup, and side dishes), the second on Naoshima (sashimi-topped rice, silky sesame tofu, fried fish, and soup). The silky tofu tasted almost like burrata — but is presumably much healthier!

(7) I’ve eaten a lot of grocery store sushi on this trip, and the price-to-quality ratio is incredible. This box of maguro, chu-toro, and o-toro costs $12–18 USD (depending on the day). One piece of o-toro of this quality could cost me that in the United States!

When people ask me what I’ll miss most about Japan, the answer is obvious.