Refuel and refresh at Japan's gourmet motoring rest stops
Whoever said it's better to travel than to arrive must have been traveling in Japan. Just ask the folks who hit the road earlier this month for the o-Bon summer holidays. Sure, the nightly newscasts were filled with horror stories of bumper-to-bumper traffic, but ...
O-chūgen: Hand-picked gourmet gifts courtesy of the postman
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, ...
Yokohama 'museum' marks 20 years curating ramen royalty
Now that ramen has taken its place alongside sushi as the world's favorite Japanese food, it's easy to forget what the noodle landscape was like just a couple of decades ago. Back in the 1990s, foreigners knew ramen — if they knew it at ...
Japan says 'aloha' to Hawaiian food
I should have realized that my first trip to Cinnamon's would end in tears. Or, at least, in an uncomfortably long wait. This newly opened transplant from Kailua, Hawaii, is on the bucket list of every OL (office lady) in the Kanto area, and ...
Japan's freshest ready meals can be found in the basement
If there’s one thing all Japanese guidebooks, concierges and expats can agree on, it’s that tourists from overseas should make an effort, at some point during their stay, to visit the basement food floors of a major department store.
Japanese baseball stadiums hit a B-kyū gourmet home run
Coming off the most exciting season in recent memory, Japanese baseball is flying high — in some cases, literally so. Star pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, who signed with the New York Yankees in the offseason after leading the Rakuten Eagles to the Japan Series title, ...
Prize-winning local dishes are the real taste of Japan
With memories of the Winter Olympics still fresh and with the Academy Awards just around the corner, Japanese food lovers are saluting some medalists of their own — prize-winning dishes from cooking competitions, public opinion polls and government surveys around the country. Here's a ...
New book gets to the soul of Japanese home cooking
Like the Denver Broncos, the Nikkei stock index and "Gravity" director Alfonso Cuarón, Japanese food is on a hot streak. Here at home, the revival of interest in classic regional fare known as B-kyū gourmet (B-level cuisine) has spread to supermarket shelves and fast-food ...
A year of pancakes, donuts, flying fish
Japan has reached peak donut. In a year of otherwise promising trends in the B-kyū gourmet (B-grade cuisine) scene, Japanese diners saved their heartiest appetite for Western-style breakfast. The onslaught of U.S. franchises specializing in pancakes, French toast and eggs Benedict continued apace, with Slappy Cakes ...
Japan's love for curry means endless variety
It's only a slight exaggeration to say that Japanese curry saved my life. After relocating to Japan in the late 1990s, I found myself underemployed, surrounded by unfamiliar foodstuffs and suffering from a near-total lack of cooking skills. Yet I managed to fill up ...
A gourmet tour of Japan in one spot
If you were visiting Japan and wanted to experience the best of the country’s dining scene, your itinerary might look something like this:
Shopping tips from the Costco queen
Talk about a crazy idea: A big-box American retailer seeks to enter a market where customers value precision and sophistication in their shopping experience.
