The local train bound for Yamakawa bucked and buckled down the coast, jouncing us until our teeth rattled, and Yamakawa was so dinky we had to walk across the train tracks to exit the station. The taxi took us through a confusing rabbit warren of streets and, after asking directions ...
On a rainy day in June, the exhibition halls inside Tokyo Big Sight were brightly lit, accentuating the metallic gleam of the high-tech equipment on display at the Japan Food Machinery Manufacturers’ Association expo. The atmosphere was slightly disorienting, a cross between a county ...
Finding a decent vegetarian meal in Nagoya can be a tough task in and of itself, so finding an almost-all-veggie venue that is also vegan-friendly is a very rare treat indeed. Partnered with an organic supermarket that deals with local farmers, bakers and candlestick ...
The name may be considered a little misleading, as VegeVege does have its fair share of meat and fish dishes, but the entire menu is infused with home-grown goods and local products, so everything available is crisp and garden-fresh. There is a huge selection ...
With all the convenience stores and bakeries coming up with their own variations on the famous Cronut from New York, there are too many to choose from, but the Croissant Donuts from the Heart Bread Antique stand outside of Seibu Shibuya department store in ...
Even though the Japanese didn’t invent the idea of exchanging gifts, they seem to be doing everything they can to convince themselves that they did. This is a culture, after all, that celebrates Christmas without Jesus, piles White Day on top of Valentine’s Day, ...
Osaka’s Minami-Ibaraki is noteworthy for (at least) two things: a vertiginous lattice of train tracks and elevated highways topped by a monorail, and “Until Sun Child Rises,” a giant statue of a yellow anime-like astronaut boy that stands outside the train station. To this ...
I happen to be one of those vegetarians who has never developed even an inkling of a taste for meat. It was thus one of the most bizarre culinary experiences I could have imagined to bite into a juicy, steaming dumpling of flesh — ...
Newly opened (and tiny) dessert counter 196° Ice Cream in Harajuku isn’t making an empty boast when it says that it serves the freshest ice cream in the world. The staff blend raw mixture with cups of liquid nitrogen, and after a minute of ...
Precision. This is the premise on which everything at Pancotei is based, from the angle of the ear of wild asparagus, the volume of the froth on a glass of beer, the suitability of a single Japanese maple leaf as an adornment to a ...
In Japanese cooking, garnish is not just added to a dish to make it look pretty. The word to describe the herbs and vegetables that accompany a dish is yakumi, which means “medicinal flavor,” and originally referred to the concoctions that practitioners of Chinese ...
Tokyo’s taste for high-end meat is maturing fast. For the cognoscenti, breed, provenance and fat content have long been critical. Now add one more key factor: aging. That’s the focus at several new venues. At Ruby Jack’s, the slick, chic steakhouse that opened in ...
“Vinegar wine” sounds pretty much like what happens when wine goes bad — not exactly something you would want to drink with a steak. But when I discovered that a new place called Marni Baru in Shimokitazawa was serving what it called vinegar wine ...
