Food as a ritual

Of course, the Western habit of booking ahead helps, especially when we're talking about a space with limited seats, which is hardly unusual in Japan. It's perhaps also connected to your chances of finding a menu that has been fully translated into English: the smaller the restaurant, the fewer those chances. Once you're seated, though, certain differences become easy to notice.

It quickly becomes clear that the primary goal of most establishments is to offer you warmth alongside your meal. The oshibori (おしぼり), which are damp towels, sometimes warm and sometimes less so, sometimes scented with mint or tea leaves, are almost always the first thing to arrive at your table.

Then, or perhaps simultaneously, the menus arrive. Sometimes you'll need to translate them with your phone, and sometimes they'll earn you a spontaneous laugh because of their machine translation. The horumonyaki (ホルモン焼き) dishes, translated in some menus as “hormone beef,” were probably the funniest.

You'll often find a QR code you can scan to order immediately, which streamlines things nicely since everyone in the group can add items to the list. If you ask for recommendations, your hosts will suggest a dish with particular enthusiasm.

Something that gave me great pleasure was how much care went into serving them ice cold for maximum enjoyment. Beers from Japan's Big Four are available worldwide. But drinking them from a frozen glass in Japan was always one of the favourite moments of the day.

It came as no surprise that we were largely in the dark when it came to the various types of sake (酒). Sake, however, is made from fermented rice and has a lower alcohol content than drinks I'm used to having. What struck me was that proprietors called it nihonshu (日本酒), meaning Japanese drink. My personal standout was the Ohmine 3 Grain, made with yamada nishiki (山田錦), a rice variety typically cultivated in Hyogo Prefecture. This rice is known for its water-absorbing qualities, and the sake takes on a very elegant flavour that is strongly reminiscent of muscat.

Back to the food: I can say that a beautiful chaos reigns in my head. In Japan, restaurants are a sacred matter and visits to them a daily ritual. Every day included a visit for lunch and one for dinner. So as not to do anyone a disservice, and also so that I can actually close this article sometime this year, I'll limit myself to writing about 4 experiences that stood out in my heart. I begin in no particular order:

A unique discovery in travels far from the familiar is that the clichés of a place don't translate one to one. That evening at Tsukiji in Tokyo I was hungry and spotted a gentleman outside a sushi restaurant calling for customers. An automatic no from my European-conditioned brain. After asking whether they served wagyu sushi, because one member of our group doesn't eat fish, we went in. The staff greeted us warmly and we sat at the traditional bar to eat, being perhaps the last customers of the day. We ordered an assortment of sushi with various fresh fish from the local market, and beers.

Very quickly, the sushi assortments arrived in front of us. The staff thanked us again and again for our presence, as though we were the first customers of the day. The reason this place stands out for me is that fish often carries a strong smell; here, everything was as fresh as you can imagine. Alongside the sushi, the only accompaniments were pieces of pickled ginger and that particular Japanese delicacy of the slightly sweet egg omelette, tamagoyaki (卵焼き).

When I told them that my limited Japanese was the result of years of watching anime, and mentioned that my childhood favourite was Dragon Ball, one of the itamae (板前) proceeded to act out Majin Buu's line.

The saying “ask and you’ll find your way” didn’t come about by accident. We found ourselves on Nishinishiki-kojitso street after asking the barman at Mononoma where to eat. That's how we stumbled upon the izakaya (居酒屋) Bingo in Kyoto. I walked in confidently thinking it's the spot they told us at the bar and only realized it wasn't while writing this post. It reminded me a little of the concept of a gastro-taverna, where traditional dishes made room for new ideas and flavours. After settling into a table towards the back of the restaurant and glancing at the menu, we decided to order the whole thing. Alright, maybe 2 or 3 dishes escaped us and a few others had run out, but you get the idea.

We didn't miss the tomato salad that had run out, and although I'm not generally fond of tofu, one outstanding dish was the steaming slow-cooked beef with tofu. The walnuts with sweet miso, the soft-boiled eggs with truffle mayonnaise, the spring rolls with chorizo, and especially the pork belly slices wrapped in lettuce left us open-mouthed.

I would go back to try the dishes that had run out, and to eat the pork belly and lettuce rolls again, which we had probably ordered 3 times.

Actions speak louder than words, and here Tokito triumphs with sandwiches of 3 to 5 ingredients. Walking in, you find limited seats to enjoy one of 5 sandwich options: egg, chicken, or wagyu (和牛) beef, which between us is what makes this place unmissable. Wagyu beef steak and wasabi (ワサビ) mayonnaise inside a fluffy shokupan (食パン), the cloud-soft bread that became popular in Japan after the Second World War due to rice shortages. The egg sandwich is equally airy, and the eggs have a whipped-cream texture that makes you want to learn how to make it at home.

The wagyu sandwich stands out for one simple reason. It says a great deal with very few ingredients. The wasabi mayonnaise is what holds the bread’s slices together around the beef, doing exactly what it needs to and no more, and each bite brings both a moment of joy and a sense of sadness as you watch the sandwich disappear.

Noodle tavern: Lotus, Dignity and Kindness. Sometimes the language barrier is what holds us back from understanding the meaning behind the name of a restaurant we visited. In this menya (麺や), the noodle tavern with such an imaginative name, we discovered what these words truly mean. The owner is a tall, slender man who presides between the wooden bar and his kitchen, cooking ramen to earn his living. He settled for a heartfelt arigatou (ありがとう) when I told him it was the best ramen I had ever eaten.

Without much preamble, we started with some gyoza (餃子), steamed dumplings filled with vegetables and meat that melted in the mouth. The undisputed star, however, was a rich, slightly spicy ramen. Swimming in the broth were ground meat, spring onions, nori (海苔), which is dried seaweed, and thin slices of chashu (チャーシュー), the slow-braised pork so characteristic of Japanese cuisine. With the first sip of the broth, I immediately felt the warmth the owner was trying to convey.

After the customary exchange of thank-yous, the owner asked us to write our names on a small wooden plaque along with a message in our own languages. He wanted to hang it on the wall alongside other small plaques left by previous guests. When we asked if there was any sake, he told us he didn't sell it, but that he would give it to us as a gift.

That's all folks, but for me a door opened into a world I had only glimpsed from a distance. I ate as noisily as the most enthusiastic characters in manga for teenagers and clinked my beer and sake with a smile. I deliberately excluded any mention on the coffee culture, as we've experienced it every day in Japan, but this chapter of the trip deserves its own story. It was only the beginning, and if you too are looking for hospitality in places far from the familiar, Japan is somewhere that lovers of food will be rewarded beyond measure.