Food & Souvenirs

Sapporo food ranked on one rule: whose dish it is on the record — the city's or the island's — and whether it needs a table. Soup curry, miso ramen, jingisukan, crab and uni decided as meal slots; zangi, butadon and kaisendon declined by name; crab and uni by the month.

Hiroshima food ranked on a stated rule, for a day or a night in the city. Okonomiyaki, oysters, anago meshi, momiji manju and the noodle question decided as meal slots; what needs a train; oysters by month; and why the okonomiyaki is not the one you ate in Osaka.

Japan is workable without meat or fish once you know where the fish is: in the stock. Which dishes are fish by default, which never had it, and what to ask.

Tokyo food ranked on one rule: which of the city's own dishes never left it. Five seats placed by ward, Edomae sushi declined by name, and what to do instead.

Kyoto food ranked on one rule: what the Kyoto premium buys. Kaiseki, the tofu course and Nishiki decided as meal slots; the famous ones declined by name.

Five food souvenirs ranked on one rule — clears your border, survives your suitcase — with the US verdict and gov.uk's words for Great Britain on each, three things left in Japan by name, and what declaring costs at a US desk.

Five Fukuoka items, ranked on one rule: what each asks of you before you can eat it. A seat, a booking, a second person, or nothing at all — plus what a yatai evening is really worth, and the three things worth skipping.

Osaka publishes no official list of its own dishes — four government schemes exist and none of them defines one. So here is a ranking with its criteria stated, sorted by the only scarce thing a visitor has: sit-down meals.

Nagoya has an official list of twenty-two local dishes. If you are changing trains and have one or two meals, that is not a list, it is a problem. Five worth sitting down for, four we are not sending you to, and the criteria that produce the order.

A Japanese convenience store guide that starts with what the konbini is actually for on a trip — cash, food at any hour, a courier counter — then the register question that quietly changes what you pay, and the three things guides still claim that stopped being true in 2022.