Okinawa soba: Noodle of the island king still popular today

Hakodate occupies a unique place on the Japanese landscape, both literally and gastronomically speaking. Facing the Tsugaru Strait from its position on the southern shores of Hokkaido's Oshima Peninsula, the city grew from a small Ainu fishing village to become, in 1854, Japan's first port ...

Cut off by the Ou Mountains to the south and far removed from any center of power, Aomori Prefecture's remote Tsugaru Peninsula was largely left to its own devices until the Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1573-1603). In the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), different factions of the Tsugaru ...

Behind the usual assortment of fresh produce and their derivative goods at the UNU Farmers' Market in Aoyama last weekend, Tokyo Beer Week 2017, which runs through June 11, was quietly kicking off by offering nearly four dozen taps of craft beer from in ...

Often touted as Tokyo's apex of cool, Koenji is a maze of narrow mixed-use streets, where the city's trendsetters, en route to hip cafes, cross paths with pensioners browsing cheap vegetables and various knickknacks. Koenji is a neighborhood that seemingly has it all, or at ...

For the first few days of each year, Tokyo is relatively quiet. Businesses are shuttered for the New Year's holiday, and many of the city's inhabitants retreat to family homes in the countryside to unwind with loved ones. Neighborhoods that are typically crowded with ...

Depending on who you ask, Roppongi is either Tokyo's most sophisticated neighborhood or its seediest. Yet everyone can agree it's one of the city's most international. Each night, expats, emigres and immigrants wend their way through a landscape of restaurants, hostess bars, art galleries ...

It may be located in the center of Tokyo but people always seem to be passing through Kanda on their way to someplace else: north to Akihabara, east to Asakusa, south to Tokyo Station or west to the Imperial Palace. This liminal neighborhood can ...

A short distance from Shibuya's madding crowds is Craftheads, a veteran bar in Tokyo's craft beer scene. I drift into this basement bar, grab a seat and reach for the menu before the masses arrive. I find a short roster of stalwart Japanese beers ...

Shinjuku is, in many ways, the center of Japan. It's the seat of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, home to the busiest train station in the world and has been immortalized countless times in film and literature. For many first-timers, a night in this frenetic ...