Japan Traveler's Companion. Rob Goss
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built into the table.
A teppanyaki restaurant, where the chefs display expert knife skills and flair in cooking the meat, seafood and vegetables in front of you.
Check out the lanterns outside an izakaya and they often tell you what kind of food is inside to go with the beer and sake. This one advertises kushikatsu (deep-fried skewered meat) and yakisoba (fried noodles) among other things.
Sushi is the most famous of Japanese foods. You could easily drop $300 at a top sushi restaurant in somewhere like Ginza or you could binge on a budget at a revolving train sushi bar (kaitenzushi). Even the cheapest options tend to be good, even if it’s a ¥500 supermarket sushi bento.
Thanks to some stellar marketing Kobe beef gets all the plaudits overseas, but in Japan it’s just one of dozens of highly rated wagyu beef brands. Aficionados tend to rate Kobe-gyu, Matsuzaka-gyu (Mie Prefecture) and Ohmi-gyu (Shiga Prefecture) as the top three, but also look out for Yonezawa-gyu, Hitachi-gyu, and Kyoto-gyu amongst others.
Ramen is cheap, ubiquitous and much loved. There are numerous regional variations, too, from the miso-based Sapporo ramen to the pork bone broth-based Hakata ramen. Regardless of variety, a quick way to tell if a place is good or not—the length of the queue.
Yakitori (grilled chicken on skewers) is one of those Japanese foods that can be pricey or cheap, served in plush surrounds or chargrilled in backstreet stalls. Either way, it’s a must-try.
Even the cheapest of soba noodle stands are worth a try. For as little as ¥300, you can get a hot bowl of noodles topped with a veggie tempura—perfect for a quick bite on the go, which is why you’ll often find them in and around stations, sometimes standing only.
JAPAN’S COLORFUL MATSURI
A Panoply of Extraordinary Festivals and Celebrations
Japan’s myriad festivals mark the changing of seasons and rites of passage, they light up summer skies and add moments of warmth to harsh winters, bring communities together and keep traditions alive. They are so deeply interwoven into Japanese society that whatever time of year you might visit Japan and whichever part of the country you find yourself in, there’s a strong chance that a festival (or matsuri to use the Japanese word) of some kind or other will be taking place nearby.
Come to Japan in spring and the most obvious events will be the cherry-blossom parties (called hanami; literally, “flower viewing”) that follow the annual wave of sakura (cherry blossom) northward across the country, with the whole of Japan seemingly welcoming spring with picnics and parties under the delicate pink blossoms. With blossoms soon turning brown on the ground and spring starting to give way to summer, the number of festivals increases. To pluck out a few of the annual highlights, there’s the Sanja Matsuri in May in Tokyo’s Asakusa, where amid huge crowds frenzied groups of bearers carry highly decorative portable shrines through streets in honor of the seventh-century founders of Sensoji Temple. Or for a couple more with deep historical roots, there’s the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto in July with its processions of floats and people in period dress, and in the sweltering heat of mid-August Tokushima’s Awa Odori, which sees dance troupes clad in colorful traditional costumes prance and shout day and night to a pulsating accompaniment of shamisen, flute, bells and drums, attracting in excess of a million visitors to the city over three days.
More than anything, however, across Japan high summer is fireworks season, with events like Tokyo’s Sumida River Fireworks Festival illuminating the sky and bringing the streets to life with a mixture of colorful street stalls selling festival staples like yakisoba (fried noodles), yakitori (chicken skewers) and kakigori (shaved ice), not to mention the brightly patterned cotton yukata summer kimono worn by many of the onlookers.
In autumn, some of the best festivals are connected to major shrines, with traditional parades and displays of horseback archery taking place in Kamakura and Nikko as part of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine’s and Toshogu Shrine’s seasonal celebrations. Then comes winter, when almost the entire nation welcomes in the new year with shrine visits and the northern regions come in to their own with snow and ice festivals, the most famous of which sees Sapporo in Hokkaido (page 132) transformed into an outdoor gallery of giant ice sculptures at the Snow Festival in February. And with that we’ve only just touched tip of the matsuri iceberg.
The Jidai Matsuri in October sees Kyoto turn the clock back with processions in period costumes.
The Aoi Matsuri in Kyoto sees decorated furyugasa umbrellas being paraded.
Visit Japan in late March or early April for the best Japanese celebration of them all: hanami (cherry blossom viewing). The pink blossoms only stay for a couple of weeks, with their spectacular peak lasting just days, but send Japan into a frenzy of celebrations.
The Yayoi Festival celebrated in April in Nikko. Dating to the late 700s, the annual event welcomes in spring, with the highlight being a parade of eleven of these decorative floats.
Japan also welcomes events from other cultures, such as the annual Asakusa Samba Festival.
Watch a sumo tournament when in Japan if you can. There are six taking place every odd month of the year. The most expensive (and possibly most dangerous) are the ringside seats, where wrestlers may collide into the spectators.
It doesn’t really matter what the occasion—Coming of Age Day in January or a summer fireworks display—you see people in colorful kimono or yukata at many of Japan’s festivals.
As part of the Ohara Hadaka Matsuri in Chiba Prefecture, locals carry portable shrines into the sea to pray for bumper fishing catches. The word hadaka means “naked”, which generally means little more than loin cloths for those taking part.
A maiko (trainee geisha) taking part in the Hanagasa parade at the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto, which is held every July.
The Ohara Matsuri dance festival in Kagoshima every November attracts ten thousand dancers, like these here performing Okinawan dances.
A monk walks on coals