traveling through Japan

[RossyW]

Hello all,

I'm in the process of applying for the JET Programme to go live and teach in Japan for a year. I have to choose a few specific cities/prefectures as preferred placements.

At the moment I am targetting Kobe and Kyoto as my top two choices and am considering a number of other places for a third choice (Osaka, Yokohama, Hiroshima, Fukuoka).

Are any of these places, or any other cities I haven't listed that would be worth considering, notably food challenged? Or have great culinary reputations?

I very much enjoy everything I find at a US Japanese restaurant but don't know much beyond that, I'm looking forward to the variety offered in the real country. However I can't say much more beyond that about what type of eating options I'd be looking for. And it should probably be obvious that I'm not going to be having a lot of $100 dinners on my teacher's salary, so I'm not looking for the culinary cutting edge so much as a place that has great tasty variety.

By the way, I have decided to avoid Tokyo, although I would love to live in a city that big, because I'm getting scared of being stuck in one of its ultra-boring concrete suburbs.

Thanks!!

[torakris]

What kind of food are you interested in?

Only Japanese?

I have to admit I love where I am living, 20 minutes into both central Tokyo and central Yokohama,. I can eat foods from all over Japap and all over the world for that matter with out leaving my backyard.

Where ever you go the actual dishes will not be too different, but the preparation style may be. They have sushi all over Japan, but in the Kansai area it tends to be of the oshi-zushi (pressed) type while in Kanto you will find the nigiri style is more common. Simmered dishes in Kanto are a lot more heavy on the soy then in Kansai, and each region seems to have their popular ramens.

Tokyo suits me because I love strong tastes, trips to Kyoto have always been disappointing food wise as I find it bland to tasteless. Of course this is just my opinion

While every area has their specialities, you no longer need a train ticket to get to them, once local specialites are now popping up in supermarkets nationwide.

What kind of foods are you interested in eating?

By the way I am slowly working on a reference of all the prefectures and their local specialities and eating habits from region to region. Look for it here early next year.

[herbacidal]

By the way, I have decided to avoid Tokyo, although I would love to live in a city that big, because I'm getting scared of being stuck in one of its ultra-boring concrete suburbs.

from what i understand, even if you were to choose tokyo, you wouldn't be likely to get it.

as i recall, they look upon those who choose tokyo as amateurs, people who aren't so serious about the program and may not be as dedicated as they should be.

Edited October 16, 2003 by herbacidal (log)

[RossyW]

Torakris,

My experience with Japanese food is pretty superficial. Much of it comes from hokey Benihana's type restaurants too. So consider me without prejudice Just wondering if anyone thought that quality/variety varied from place to place.

Obviously I wouldn't just be interested in Japanese food, I couldn't limit myself to just that. If there is a significant difference in the amount of international tasties available, well, that's something to consider too. As it is I'm planning on throwing myself straight into Japanese cuisine, so that was more what I was concerned with.

herbacidal,

I don't think that putting Tokyo on the application would impact my candidacy (at least that's what they claim) but it is unlikely to be granted. I think the vast majority of applicants will put Tokyo (or maybe Kyoto) as their preference, and most of those people will in fact be assigned to rural areas.

So I think and hope that putting somewhere like perhaps Kobe or Fukuoka, from what I can tell both pretty/interesting/cosmopolitan cities but unlikely to be named on too many applications, will make my request more likely to be granted.

[smallworld]

Wow, Rossy! All the cities you mentioned are famous food cities! Amazing.

Like Torakris said, there are basics that are mostly the same all over. But most cities or prefectures do have local specialties.

Let's see, Kobe has its western style bakeries and sweets, a famous Chinatown, as well as great beef. Osakans are fiercely proud of their local foods, with takoyaki and okonomiyaki amoung the favourites. Yokohama has a long history of western food and is famous for its Chinatown. Hiroshima's got oysters and their own version of Okonomiyaki. Fukuoka has tonkotsu ramen and a huge variety of street food. And Kyoto has an amazing cuisine all its own.

And I'm not sure about Hiroshima, but they've all got fairly large foreign communities so the international food scenes are good too.

It would be really hard to come up with a better list of food places (just add Sapporo, Okinawa, and a few others). Really.

I'm very happy here in suburban Tokyo, but if you have too choose, then I think either Yokohama or somewhere in the Kansai region would be best. A bonus for the Kansai region- no matter where you stay, its possible to make day trips to Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto.

I'm sure no matter which place you end up in, you'll love the food. But let us know where you end up!

[herbacidal]

I don't think that putting Tokyo on the application would impact my candidacy (at least that's what they claim) but it is unlikely to be granted.  I think the vast majority of applicants will put Tokyo (or maybe Kyoto) as their preference, and most of those people will in fact be assigned to rural areas. 

So I think and hope that putting somewhere like perhaps Kobe or Fukuoka, from what I can tell both pretty/interesting/cosmopolitan cities but unlikely to be named on too many applications, will make my request more likely to be granted.

yes, from what i understand, a significant percentage of the applicants put tokyo.

maybe it's not quite so bad as i suggest above. but, i would agree chances are against it.

i personally would pick yokohama first, because of proximity to tokyo.

food and life of yokohama, tokyo short distance away.

then kyoto and osaka, because they are centrally located, should i want to travel anywhere else and likely lively cities in their own right.

[RossyW]

Yokohama has definitely been recommended to me, so it will be on my list of cities to do some more research on.

Thanks for all the help so far. And smallworld, I will definitely say where I end up, but for now I'm going to concentrate on being accepted in the first place!

[smallworld]

And smallworld, I will definitely say where I end up, but for now I'm going to concentrate on being accepted in the first place!

Fair enough. Good luck!

[gus_tatory]

RossyW--

at this link:

description of traditions and food by prefecture

you can read about varying specialties and traditions,

good luck!

gus

[helenjp]

OK...top to bottom...

My husband comes from Hokkaido, and proudly states that the food is the best (surprise surprise). It has a lot of influence from the NE regions, but people immigrated from all over Japan, including coal-mining regions in Kyushu, and then many of those who fled Manchuria also ended up in Hokkaido. An interest in American food came along with US-influenced pastoral agricultural technology. It certainly does have access to great ingredients, but lots of crops traditional in other places (like nashi pears) cannot be grown in Hokkaido.

North-east region (Northern Honshu): a lot of soy-simmered dishes and preserved foods -- the long cold winters make for great soy, miso, sake, and pickles. I've always had a hankering to live in Sendai...not too far north, but out of the big cities...

This kind of cooking PLUS excellent seafood is found right down the western coast of Honshu (facing the continent). Noto Peninsula and Kanazawa probably represent this food best, and Kanazawa also has inherited the Kansai temple cooking traditions.

Tokyo-Chiba-Yokohama...everybody has commented on that already, but rural eastern Chiba (the Boso peninsula) has access to a lot of seafood, good beaches, and some dairy farming.

Nagano, Yamanashi etc. Center of Japan's wine industry, and a lot of other fruits also grown there. Food is pretty much down the middle; much as for North-east, but the climate is not quite so severe in winter, and so there is a bigger range of vegetables. This is soba country, and they eat buckwheat dumplings as well as the usual noodles.

Nagoya -- famed for miso-based versions of food which in other regions is cooked with soy. Miso and pickles come downriver from inland, and they also have seafood and get good beef and pork from the Wakayama peninsula. The city itself is not a beauty spot, but both Nagoya and Osaka are small enough to get out of at weekends.

Kyoto, yeah, yeah, as expected. Like all the inland cities, there are more salt-fish and fresh-water fish. I spent time in Osaka so I like the food of this region, but Nara is perhaps more fun to live in -- a much older city and less "refined", with a new technopolis on top of it -- making for quite a lively population. Of course this is the center of the Chinese-influenced temple cooking, but you will also find a lot of it north and south down to Wakayama.

Osaka is very much a trade city -- lots of its best-known dishes are quick, cheap and cheerful rather than elegant! Osaka has a lot of udon too.

Shikoku -- udon is the most famous, but once I'd eaten sashimi in Takamatsu, I've never bothered to spend money on expensive sashimi in Tokyo -- it just doesn't taste good enough to be worthwhile. People along the Inland Sea eat a wider variety of fish than in Tokyo.

Hiroshima -- culturally, this is a very interesting city. REdevelopment after WWII has brought people from all over Japan, and it has a lively music and arts scene, as well as some excellent restaurants, I hear -- haven't stopped there though.

Can't comment much on Kyushu, except for the obvious Chinese influence -- lots of egg noodles, stir-fried mixed dishes etc. Nagasaki is a beautiful city, and it has great Chinese food. I've never eaten mooncakes as good as the ones my sister and I ate high on the hills behind the city, watching the evening settle over the harbor.

The rest of the time I spent in Kyushu is a blur, and as we stayed at youth hostels, the food was definitely of the cheap and cheerful type.

Hope you enjoy wherever you find yourself posted.

[russel]

A few more regional specialties by prefecture:

Aomori - ringo (apples)

Akita - shottsuru nabe and kiritampo

Toyama - buri daikon and hotaru ika

Wakayama - umeboshi and maguro

Tottori nashi (pears) and rakkyo (pickled onions)

Hiroshima - okonomiyaki, anago and kaki (oysters)

Yamaguchi - fugu

Hakata - karashi mentaiko

Nagasaki - champon noodles and castella cake

Matsuyama - tempura soba (if you've read botchan)

Okinawa - awamori

[skchai]

While we're on this topic, can anyone recommend a good prefecture-by-prefecture or region-by-region cookbook or cookbook series (in Japanese)? I looked around Kinokuniya last time I was there and couldn't find anything.

Thanks!

[torakris]

While we're on this topic, can anyone recommend a good prefecture-by-prefecture or region-by-region cookbook or cookbook series (in Japanese)?  I looked around Kinokuniya last time I was there and couldn't find anything. 

Thanks!

I was intriqued by this question sice I can't recall ever seeing a book (or series) like that. I spent some time both on the internet and a bookstore looking and came up empty handed.

All I could come up with were more like guide books that pointed out the best foods and restaurants of all the different areas.

I didn't look up all the prefectures, but the only prefecture that came up with cookbooks exclusively for their area was Okinawa.

I will keep looking!

[smallworld]

While we're on this topic, can anyone recommend a good prefecture-by-prefecture or region-by-region cookbook or cookbook series (in Japanese)?  I looked around Kinokuniya last time I was there and couldn't find anything. 

Thanks!

Never seen anything like this either, but what a great idea! Someone should right this (in English OR Japanese)!

The closest thing I've seen was the Japanese Food guide in the JTB series- you know those little (English language) mini books with the funny illustrations? I lent mine to my parents for their trip here so I don't have it around to check, but I'm pretty sure they mention a few regional specialties. Nothing in-depth though and I don't think recipes were provided.

[skchai]

Thanks so much, Kristen and Smallworld! I really appreciate your expertise and help.

It does seem paradoxical to me that while there seem to be Japanese cookbooks on even the most microscopic of topics (e.g. 100 recipes for gyoza, , etc.), as well as cookbooks on the regions of France and Italy in Japanese, it's so hard to find any books on the regions of Japan.

It's interesting that Okinawa is the exception - I guess this might be a side-effect of the Okinawa "boom" of the last few years!

[torakris]

this is really starting to fascinate me, for a country that loves to travel so much why wouldn't there be at least one series of recipes from around the country. I gave up at Amazon and spent a better part of the day searching the internet popping in nearly all the prefectures as well as regions and sometimes cities and still came up blank!

Okinawa was really the only exception.

[torakris]

I just ran across this set of newly published books called Furusato no Katei-ryouri (Hometown Homestyle cooking), it is not broken down into regions rather types of cooking. Each of the 20 books has a type of food as the theme and then breaks in down into the variations by region. Not all of the books seem to break down into regions however...

here is the website:

http://www.ruralnet.or.jp/zensyu/furusato/

[Sinbad]

RossyW

In my view it will be difficult for you to find an area in Japan with bad food. Tokyo is propably the best place in Japan for food(similar to Paris in France, NY in the US ...), but since you do not wish to live there my advise is to either live close to it(as has been suggested in this thread) or live in a city close to the ocean. Japan does seafood better than any other place on the planet, and by living close to the ocean you will be able to experience the best that Japan has to offer. My recommendation would be Kyushuu, I was there a couple of months back and the food was spectacular. Not only was the seafood spectacular, chicken, beef etc was also wonderful.

[RossyW]

Thank you Sinbad.

Fukuoka is rapidly gaining as the darkhorse candidate on my list, they've got a fun baseball team and great food, so what's not to like? Kyushu seems a wonderful place to bicycle or hitchhike around, as a contrast to the urban corridor of Osaka-Kobe.

[Sinbad]

RossyW,

The only drawback Kyushuu has compared with other areas of Japan is that there is (to my knowledge) no skiing there, don't know if it is an issue for you. Fukuokas proximity to Korea and S-E Asia makes it quite international(but not as much as Tokyo-Osaka-Kobe), and communication to S-E Asia(which you "must" explore while you are in Japan) is quite good.

Exploring the region by bike should be fun, some of the best seafood can be had in small fishing villages.

[Alex]

As someone who did the Japan teaching thing about 15 years ago, I certainly can support a non-megalopolis option. I lived in the Hamamatsu-Iwata area, and while it supported most of the big-city niceties (including a Häagen-Dazs ice cream shop and the best reasonably priced French restaurant I've ever eaten at) I could hop on my motor scooter and be in the middle of rice and tea fields in ten minutes or at a deserted Pacific Ocean beach in twenty. The cost of living, especially housing, was significantly less than the large urban areas. (Fûkuoka City's population is no small potatoes, though, about 1.3 million.)

[RossyW]

Thank you for your help, everyone.

I could hop on my motor scooter and be in the middle of rice and tea fields in ten minutes or at a deserted Pacific Ocean beach in twenty.

That sounds wonderful!

[helenjp]

I had great food in Shikoku (...a LONG time ago though) visiting some JETS, and cycling around with my teenage niece on the back of my bicycle. One hot summer day my legs gave out and an extra giant wobble landed her in a paddy field!

The northern parts of Kyushu I saw certainly had plenty of different styles of cuisine to offer the interested eater.

Have fun, wherever you end up!

[Yuki]

Planning a one week trip to Japan in July with my family. I've been to Tokyo twice so probably won't go there again. Our choices are Hokkaido or Osaka and its surrounding.My parents and sister like Hokkaido better because they know there will be lots of beautiful scenery and lavender fields.....I care about the food more.........

Where would you pick? Would like to stay in family "hotel" or ryokan, would it be hard for us to book a room without knowing Japanese and an agent?

[Jason Perlow]

Osaka, definitely. Once referred to as the "Kitchen of Japan". Well known for Takoyaki and the origin of Udonsuki noodles and Ozaka-sushi. However, I found this about Hokkaido, which piqued my interest:

http://kanko.pref.hokkaido.jp/kankodb/foreign/e/trv_i002.htm