Oh Japanese food, how I loved you. Thinking about it already gives me cravings ...

I am starting to seriously miss ramen, udon, tempura anything, takoyaki, tonkatsu, curry and sushi. So ... pretty much anything Japanese food related. The thing that really surprised me was how well the Japanese did Italian food and how cheaply too. The other thing that really surprised me was how relatively cheap the food was. Before travelling to Japan, I had people telling me that the food there is not cheap in terms of other Asian countries and that I should be expecting to pay the same price as I would in Australia. However, upon arriving, I didn't really find the food to be that expensive in terms of pricing compared to Korea. If I was paying for food that was about the same price as Australia, I would be getting more for my buck so I wasn't especially unhappy about that.

My memorable restaurants in Japan had to include this Shibuya sushi restaurant where everything was done via computers. So you would be seated and a touchscreen is pretty much in front of your face. You pretty much do everything from that touchscreen - order food, order drinks and get your bill. When you order a plate of sushi, there are conveyor belts that then bring the food to you - like directly in front of you, and all you have to do is grab it off the belt and enjoy. Each plate of usually ranged from 126 - 350 yen from what I remember. So roughly like $1.50 - $4 for each plate of sushi and it wasn't bad sushi by any means.



Also from Shibuya was another restaurant called '35 Step Bistro'. I found the restaurant via tripadvisor and the restaurant is named '35 Steps Bistro' since you have to go down 35 steps before reaching the restaurant. The restaurant was somewhat hard to find but man was the food good :9. So good especially the grilled mackerel. If you happen to go to this restaurant in Japan, you have to get the grilled mackerel. Your experience won't be the same without it, especially when they torch the fish right in front of you.



Another memorable restaurant was 'Watami'. It was so good that we went back twice. We just enjoyed everything from their menu but I especially loved their yakisoba. It had such a nice sauce that coated the noodles and everything on the plate just complimented each other. I also really liked the gyoza and thin-crust pizzas off their menu. Gahhh, the drooling at the moment.



The last really memorable restaurant was a BBQ restaurant on Doutonbori Street. The meat ... oh the meat. So beautifully marinated and the sauces that went along with them was heavenly. Each type of meat had a different sauce to go along with it and it was utterly heaven. Our waitress even taught us where the meats should go on the grill plate for the best results. Man, I seriously want some KBBQ or JBBQ, as I have now termed it after that restaurant experience. The main difference that I found with JBBQ compared to KBBQ is how thinly the meat is sliced up but it is still able to retain its moisture so when you place it on your tongue, it just melts in your mouth.

Well, that pretty much finishes off all the blog posts about my trip to Korea and Japan. I can't believe that this trip took up about the better half of 2 months to get out but I guess it's a good thing because nothing much has been happening since.

As you can tell with this post, I opted not to post photos from Osaka Castle 3D Illumination Festival just because I thought it would be boring and be sort of pointless.

So with that being said, I hoped you enjoyed the hordes of food photos and until next time, stay happy :)