World Travel 2013-2014, Oishii! Japanese Food

As you can see from the featured picture, food in Japan not only looks fantastic but also tastes delicious. Traditional food is delicious and very healthy for you, but not all of the food in Japan is healthy. In fact one of my favourite places to walk past in Japan is all of the incredible bakeries (the shop fronts look incredible) where you can get all different sorts of breads and buns.

Street Food and Festivals

If you’re ever in Japan for a festival, it is worth going along just to try out the food. During New Years and also the Ebisu Festival I was surprised by how many food and game stalls were around selling everything from egg senbei to taiyaki (fish shaped cake filled with a filling such as red bean, custard, chocolate etc).

Local Cuisine

The savoury food is also delicious, and it’s worthwhile to find out what the local speciality dish is (e.g. takoyaki or okonomiyaki in Osaka). The one dish though that you will find everywhere is ramen. Each region has it’s own take; however, if you’re in Sapporo or Tokyo, they’re well known for their ramen and it’s definitely worth trying. The ramen we tried in Tokyo (pictured below) was delicious, and we also had a fantastic ramen on the little ramen street in Sapporo the last time we were in Japan.

Dessert!

Last but not least, I don’t think you could go to Japan without trying some of the desserts. Whether it’s one of the traditional desserts like fruit, dango or zenzai or the Japanese take on the parfait, it seems like the Japanese people love their desserts. The parfait we tried in Osaka (pictured below) has a cream pudding, chocolate ice cream, soft serve ice cream with sauce, cubes of sponge, banana and right down the bottom was… cornflakes? Sounds strange having 10 or so desserts in one dish, but it’s rather delicious.