If one travelled to Japan simply to eat, ignoring all the wonderful heritage sights, it would be shame, but perfectly understandable. Japan ranks as one of our favorite places to eat, right up there with Italy and Paris. Though it is sometimes difficult to find English menus – or any English at all – the tradition of placing plastic replicas of food outside restaurants, makes eating a treat. This applies even to western restaurants, where one may find little plastic pastas, sandwiches, and cakes.
For lunch, we stopped in at one of the many cafes to enjoy noodle and rice bowls. Our four-year-daughter enjoyed these as much as we did, and over the course of a week we paid between US$5 to US$9 per person at these casual establishments (the price was directly related to the café’s proximity to popular cultural destinations).
For dinner, we went to a wonderful all you can eat shabu-shabu restaurant in the Gion section of Kyoto and tried mouth-watering steak at a restaurant in the Kyoto train station. However, the restaurant that won first prize for the week was Ichibazushi in Osaka. Our hotel concierge recommended it and it was superb. Located on Nankai-Don Street, the small sushi restaurant seats 14 around a bar and offers no English whatsoever – inside or out – to identify itself. Notable also was the absence of plastic food. Nevertheless, we took a deep breath and entered. We were not disappointed.
By far, we enjoyed the best sushi we had ever experienced. Elisa gorged on her favorites, salmon and octopus sashimi, while Erik and I tried dishes recommended to us by a friendly Japanese woman (we have no idea what we ate, but it was delicious). Total price for three people was US$42. Not bad. When we couldn’t get the visions of fresh sushi out of our heads, we returned a second time on our final night to enjoy the restaurant one more time.