Ohba

I don't really buy into the whole Michelin thing at all, but it's at least worth mentioning that the stars are awarded to restaurants, not cities. The Tokyo awards may raise eyebrows elsewhere, but have you assessed the quality yourself?

Is this the kind of thing? http://metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/705/restaurants.asp It sounds, apart from the shoji, similar to any specialist (and small) tempura restaurant, where the pieces are served one by one across the counter as soon as they're ready. Rarely disappointing.

Fair enough. It was unintentional. My understanding of meat eaters and vegetarians is more sophisticated than that, certainly, and is not that much different from your own view above. My reaction, I suppose, was to the slightly patronizing way the point was (gasp) put, and what I really meant was that when a vegetarian advises a meat eater to lay off the pork chops, and gets in a dig at the same time, it isn't really impartial advice. And that a meat-eater doing likewise to a vegetarian...you get the idea. A fair point again, and when the advice is sensibly and thoughtfully put, I tend to do just that. I agree there too, although the limits imposed by veganism are extremely wide. I have seen some vegans try to deny this, but I think they are simply wrong. Those limits do create problems by restricting the range of people who will adopt a vegan diet in the first place, and setting greater challenges in preparing good and varied food than the rest of us have to face. Even having eaten a lot of Chinese Buddhist vegetarian food over the years - I think a lot of it is actually vegan, but we'll call it vegetarian - I don't think I can recall a single truly outstanding meal. It was often very good, but very good I can get anywhere....

"Eating less pig" is a vegetarian's agenda. About as welcome to a meat eater as advice to a vegetarian would be to eat less soy-based food, or fewer eggplants. I also believe that that rosy view of traditional levels of meat consumption wouldn't hold up for long under close examination. No doubt people ate far less meat on average. But seven months separate Easter and Thanksgiving, when people could indulge in "small quantities" of meat. When was that, and which people? Eating meat, and lots of it, whenever possible, has a long history in my part of the world, and I think yours too. The usual limiting factor was poverty, not lack of desire - or any interest in health.

Ah, casino culture. Lovely, isn't it?

But there's an awful lot of really sub-par sushi to be found in Hong Kong too. Let's just say availability exceeds quality by a very wide margin.

For Sichuan food, Man Jiang Hong in Causeway Bay is great. There are some others in the private kitchen category that people rate highly, and there's Shui Hu Ju in Peel Street, that a lot of people rave about (it's a look thing, I reckon). I don't think any of them hold a candle to Man Jiang Hong.

I'm not sure if these questions of mine are worth a new thread, so I'm tacking them on here. There are several new things I'd particularly like to grow in my (small) garden over the next year, if I can find a source for them. From seed: chillies fennel From plants/seedlings Bay leaves tarragon Additionally, I'd like to find a seed and plant seller that it is able to provide a good variety of things like tomato, chilli and aubergine seeds, as I'm interested in trying different types (for example, jabanero and jalapeno and other types of chilli). My local shops are very, shall we say, traditional, in what they stock. A lot of herbs are hard to find at all. So it looks as if online is the way to go. Any pointers to good suppliers would be very helpful, just a link to a Japanese website is all I'm after. Thanks to anyone who can help out on this. And I think this has come up many times before, but is ordering seeds from suppliers abroad officially not permitted?

I have to say, I'm very sceptical about some of these choices. The Chinese dishes mentioned are all over the map, from Beijing to Sichuan to Guangdong. Unless the restaurant specializes in the particular region the dish comes from, it's very likely to be a heavily adapted version. Mapo Doufu is a particularly good example, because it's a Sichuan dish that, outside Sichuan, is almost never served as it should be, except by (good) Sichuan restaurants. Even in Hong Kong or Taiwan, you won't find good Mapo Doufu easily. On the other hand, very bad (or a kinder way to say it might be "extremely diluted") versions are available at almost every restaurant, though it's not a Cantonese dish.

If I were the cynical type, I'd suggest it could only be that he hasn't eaten enough Asian food yet. No disrespect to your husband, just a recognition of the enormous variety and superb quality of Asian cuisine at its best. My own impression of the mock meat in Chinese Buddhist food is that it's palatable, in fact, quite tasty sometimes, but as to whether it's "convincing" - certainly not. It might convince a lifelong vegetarian determined to be hoodwinked, or someone who hasn't eaten any meat in years. But the nearest it comes to real meat is a vague resemblance in taste and texture. Very vague indeed, if we're honest about it. (I could elaborate, and will if necessary, but I think this point is so obvious that it barely needs explaining.) Another problem for me with Chinese vegetarian food is that garlic and onions are prohibited. Almost inevitably, it's pretty bland. If I were to look for good vegetarian and vegan food, I think Indian cuisine, and specifically South Indian, is one of the few that is really worthwhile.

Good report. You're not just allowed to; you should, if that's what you think. I don't think recommendations come much higher than that. On my next trip to Tokyo, I'll be trying that place - or trying to book, at least.

Cutting to the chase, though, "Are you serious?" is insulting and unprofessional. A reminder, if needed, that even the expectation of a 20 percent tip does little to ensure the good service that any decent restaurant should be able to provide as a matter of course and at no extra cost to the customer.

People who claim to have spat coffee all over the keyboard or monitor as a result of reading something funny by another poster....do we need that any more? No, I thought not.

I didn't even make the connection until you mentioned it. Now I see what you mean, but this would definitely have been done just as a seasonal gesture (hence the yukata). Watermelon has strong associations with the days of summer in Japan, nothing more.

So's this guy. But I don't think citing this or that mildly aged vegetarian is much proof of anything, especially one whose vegetarian wife passed on well before her time was up. And if it's true that Paul McCartney has been vegetarian since 1971, what do we learn? That 36 years of vegetarian food have made him healthy? Not killed him yet? Made no difference either way? There were two main reasons for that, really. The first was that I was following on from my point that vegetarians often make exaggerated claims concerning the health benefits of their diet. This may apply less to religious vegetarians, who are doing it for a different set of reasons, and who are probably a minority among vegetarians in the United States (where I have assumed this question was posted from). The second problem raised by religious vegetarianism is that it inevitably involves discussion of India, as (I'm ready to be corrected on this) the only country where vegetarians are a truly significant proportion of the total population. They may in fact represent the great majority of the world's vegetarians. We could of course specifically consider the diet of Indian Hindus, but I'm not sure that's what the question was asking.

Never been to Okinawa, but let me guess. Awamori and cigarettes?

Based on your second question, which is more specific "So what's the real answer? Is it better for your body to eat some meat or to entirely erase it from your diet?", the commonsense answer would be that eating "some" meat is better for you. The question is how much of course. But vegetarians are prone to making inflated claims about the health and moral benefits of their chosen diet, though a few important matters are conveniently forgotten: a) As a group they are more likely to pay attention to dietary health matters than the vastly more numerous and broadly based omnivorous population. b) Vegetarians (for non-religious reasons) are quite likely in 2, 5, 10, or so years to abandon their diet and return to being omnivores. The likelihood of this happening is significantly higher than that an omnivore becomes a vegetarian, even temporarily. As such, any figures on vegetarian longevity strike me as a bit shaky. Most vegetarians I encounter are young to early-middle....actually, scratch that, they're usually just young, and in more cases than not, spent their lives into their teenage years eating meat. Lifelong or very aged vegetarians are a rarer breed, though I stress again that I do not include religious vegetarians here. As such, I don't set much store by any blanket claim that a "vegetarian" diet is "healthier".

Odd that. I get different figures. For example, Wikipedia says that a Big Mac is 540 calories and 47% fat. McDonalds seems to agree.

I haven't been to Yokohama Chinatown for around 15 years, but unless things have changed significantly, it's an out-and-out tourist trap, overpriced, and weighted in favour of gluey-sauce Cantonese dishes. With the increasing number of Chinese in Japan these days, a lot of Chinese food now available has evolved well beyond that level. My vote goes to Cafe 8 in Tokyo. Cheap, great quality, and open 24 hours. Service is hit and miss, but you don't tip and the food's good, so who cares? It's in Tokyo, but worth the trip. When I went it wasn't busy, but I've been told there are usually lineups, so if you go, try and hit it outside normal hours. http://metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/563/restaurants.asp

The concept of "playful" food is pretty irritating, too.

I hate the term "food porn" for being simultaneously coy and vulgar. Ban it.

You didn't say what brought it to your attention/why you choose that one in particular. There are a lot of stand bars now, as it's become a bit of a fad. Your one looks fine, but I should mention that Tokyo is absolutely heaving with good bars, even if you limit your requirement to those that serve excellent food. As I usually do for questions of this type, I would recommend that you look at the website of Metropolis magazine and trawl through their archived reviews. You should be able to pick up some really good ideas there.

Like "farm fresh eggs"...

Sorry to say it, but I've had so many awful, simply terrible, Momotaro tomatoes that this year, I gave up buying them completely. I think in Japan a lot of their popularity - in the mainstream part of the market, at least - is based on colour, shape, and quite possibly even their watery tastelessness. The best may well be great, but the average are practically inedible for anyone who loves tomatoes.

Shit, man, you blew some serious cash!