Hi guys, I will travel to Japan soon and I need tips for foods and / or restaurants located in the following places:>TokyoUeno and Kagurazaka mostly.>Hakone>KyotoGion mostly.I need to know essential local foods and restaurants to try on a medium budget, so I'm searching for nothing too expensive, but I'm also not broke at all. Thanks for any suggestions!
>>2854237Go to Sapporo if you want the best food in Japan. I'm tired of pretending it's not. Tokyo is entirely overrated, especially for food and don't even get me started o n the Osaka fags that claim they are the foodies.
>>2854237I have had great success with doing this:>wander around and do cool shit until you get hungry>go to conbini, buy a couple chuhai>find somewhere to chill, get a decent buzz, and browse a few places in the area on maps, find something with good reviewsI did this and found tons of awesome places to eat.
>>2854247>>2854249Thanks, guys.
there's a tonkatsu chain in Kyoto I like called katsukurayou can have the volcano curry at owakudani station in hakone. in hakone, a lot of the hotels offer keiseki meals to guests and so lots of the restaurants around close early, atleast it was like that when I stayed in hakone-yumoto
>>2854237Japanese pussy?
>>2854352Nice, thanks.>>2854400If God gives.
>>2854237Try to look for Soup Curry. That's probably my favorite thing to eat in Japan. Its mostly Sapporo food but you can find it in tokyo. Also try okinomiyaki
>>2854428I fucking love okonomiyaki.>>2854237Dont over think which restaurants to go to and think about what dishes you want OP. Hundreds of good places in every city. Just google a dish, pick somewhere nearby with 4.5 stars or more, check reviews for language of reviewers and gravitate towards japanese reviewed restaurants.Avoid hotel adjacent restaurants, especially hotel attached restaurants. if you see a lineup of japanese business men, or just japanese people in general, its going to be either cheap and good, or a normal price and delicious. and dont completely avoid japanese food chains, they all slap, but obviously there are better choices. They usually open a lot earlier than most places in japan so if you're an early riser dont think you're wasting a meal by going to one, you'll usually have to wait until 8 or 9 am (or later) for most places to open.
>>2854247yep, sapporo food is good and hearty and inspired by euros and slavs. tokyo feels like a food desert, everything either has a long line, requires a res, or is "members only" - so if you just want to walk into a resto and eat something you're left with slop nobody else wants.
>>2854400That's a wasian lol
>>2854582I live in Tokyo and I have never in my life encountered a member's only restaurant. And agreed, the lines are fucking ridiculous since covid ended, but there's one secret: almost no place with a line is worth eating at. If there are a lot of visible tourists lined up (white people are obvious. Koreans without exception all have the same bowl cut, so if you see a bunch of Asian guys with bowl cuts, they're also tourists), then you know it's an absolutely shitty place that's been shilled on instagram. If there are loads of Japanese people lined up, then it's a shitty place that was featured on TV a week ago.Best method for finding good restaurants: look for places with google reviews around 3.9-4.4. Sort reviews by new. If they're 90% Japanese names, you're probably fine. If they're foreigners, the food sucks. If the reviews are above 4.5, the food sucks. It's either tourists giving their first meal in Japan a 5.0 (because everybody loves their first meal), or it's a restaurant giving out a free dessert or small discount for leaving a 5 star review. It's a common thing these days.And tabelog is worthless now. Companies pay for higher reviews and tourists all know about it, so it's gamed even harder than google.A lot of the best restaurants are far from tourist areas and on the second or third floor of what looks like a tiny office building in the middle of nowhere.
>>2854582>everything either has a long line, requires a res, or is "members only"this is a retarded take, I never once had to line up for food. some places have lines, sure, but Tokyo has a billion places to eat without lines. shit, even in Akiba where there is crowds everywhere I always climb to the top of yodobashi camera and order karaage and a strong zero on a machine and can immediately sit down and have my food in like ten minutes.
>>2854680i live in tokyo too and you're just not tapped in, a lot of the best sushi, teppanyaki, and sukiyaki places(you know, the ones where the wagyu isn't some fatty slop they sell tourists) are members only. same with a lot of the best bars that offer a discreet place to hang out and drink. but overall good post and good advice im just bitching about central tokyo when i say this - you can still find great food maybe just 30 minutes off the beaten path without crowds and annoyances. >>2854694>karaage and strong zero on a machinenigga you're eating slop
>>2854712>nigga you're eating slopsorry, my post was written poorly. also I meant lemon sour, not strong zero, my brain mixes the two up a lot. I want to clarify that I go to a machine to order that prints off a ticket and then they make your food and you wait, it is not from a vending machine.that said though, strong zero is not slop and is a staple of my diet in Japan.
>>2854635It’s a latina. You’re one of the people who’ll stand in a crowd of Filipinos and say >wow! There are no tourists here!
I'm planning on doing a week trip at Sapporo this summer. I heard outside of Sapporo, the public transport is not up to par with Tokyo or Osaka. >furano lavender field>biei>asahikawaIs any of these places difficult to reach and get around without renting a car?
>>2854920There are lots of half day/full day bus tours that locals do for Furano and other spots. There are trains and buses within Asahikawa that'll get you to stuff around the city.
>>2854927I saw that they have the Sapporo-Furano 4 days pass that covers pretty much where I wanted to go.
>>2854967It's probably worth doing that. I joined a bus tour for Furano nearly 10 years ago and it was fine. There were no stops at gift shops and there was sufficient time for all I wanted to see. Though I joined one geared towards Japanese people; not sure if things geared towards foreigners would be different.
>>2854635>That's a wasian>>2854777>It’s a latinaIs that one of those re-imported Brazilian Japs?
Thanks for all the tips, guys, really useful.
>>2855123You can do a reverse image search yourself and see that it's a Mexican. You're fucking stupid, christ.
>>2854247>Go to Sapporo if you want the best food in Japan.Went to Japan last month and visited Sapporo on a recommendation from a friend. The food is good, but be prepared, like in Tokyo, to make reservations or stand in long lines.
>>2854712>you can still find great food maybe just 30 minutes off the beaten path without crowds and annoyances.What are some must-eat places in Tokyo?
>>2854237>What to eat in Japan.That fat asian ass.
>>2854920Lots of lavender fields in Hungary (especially at Balaton, close to Tihany) you don't need to go as far as Japan to see them
>>2854680Bummer about Tabelog, I'll be in Toyko in ten days and all of the restaurants I was planning on going to I found on Tabelog and got reservations for. I was thinking something was fucky when western travel influences started talking about Tabelog as the best resource for finding food.
>>2855438That poster is overly critical of tabelog and I do not recommend his advice of trusting Google Reviews over tabelog. The only time I rely on Google Reviews, is checking for any recent food poisoning cases
>>2855438You should not cancel your restaurant reservations over an anonymous 4chan poster who will not be able to compensate your time and money, if he is wrong. Also, there is nothing wrong about the increase in foreigners recognizing that Japanese people regularly use tabelog, since nobody in Japan uses yelp.
>>2855475The first piece of advice you see for restaurants these days is always "no bro tabelog reviews are better always trust them." While half the reviews on tabelog are now posted by people with names like Timmy, Jimmy, and Tyrone. When every western "influencer" is talking about something, you know it's long past its glory days.For what it's worth, Japanese people today just use google reviews. Tabelog reviews are the equivalent of Yelp, mostly old people who started using it 20 years ago and just haven't stopped. If you trust Yelp reviews more than others, then maybe Tabelog is good for you. But I'm not sure that's the case. Especially since Tabelog does limit reviews to a low score if owners don't pay, and they raise scores if they do. Same as Yelp.
>>2855255That's cool but I live closer to Japan than literally any other European country.
>>2854237In my day a girl with a thick butt and zero boobs would have been called Big Butt and it wouldn't have been a compliment.
>>2854237She's half filipina and half mexican btw
I always used to go to the top floor restaurant floor in big department stores for lunch: tonkatsu pork, ramens, pizza etc. some more expensive than others. Top of Kyoto station has "ramen alley" with different regional ramen stalls.Basement floor of department store foid halls usually have mark downs on sushi sashimi packs etc in the hour or so before closing time.
>>2854428Why does this objectively average photo look so goddamn comfy?
>>2857395Something about a station house implies a sense of order in society, that people look out for each other, and want to work together.It implies there's someone in there who wakes up at 4am to check everybody is safe crossing the tracks. It's like a lighthouse on land.
>>2857421You can imagine sitting lonely on the platform, 2am, after having tried to pull an ambitious transfer to get to a rare place 'off the grid'. Nobody's around, but the hint of life on the other side; a conservative stream of lonely smoke, and an orange glow from the top window. You both silently acknowledge each other's presence on your lonely /trv/ as you count down the hours to the train which will break the dawn of day.
>>2854352Most of "kaiseki" courses are just tourists traps. Not worthy, especially in a touristy area as hakone. The best food in japan is in random small shops.
>>2857427"Kaiseki" is a standard at ryokan in Japan. Hakone is fully of ryokan. Japanese people very much do stay at ryokan, especially when they go to Hakone, so the meals there aren't necessarily tourist traps. Hakone as a whole is 99% foreigners these days, and most restaurants are ass, but if you stay at a proper ryokan, the food is still good.
The only food Japan is good at is sashimi, sushi or other seafood-related food. That's it. If you are impressed by Japanese noodles or steak or whatever I don't know what to tell you. You don't travel to east asia for food.
>>2857603
>>2857603Japan does Italian food pretty good.
>>2857609As italian i confirm. I tried 3 italian restaurants during my trip (2 pizza and 1 "trattoria") and it was really good and not that expensive. Also caffè veloce has a good espresso.
>>2857609Exceptional, often much better than average tourist-area food in Italy. And then there's the whole itameshi thing.
>>2857609I never tried pasta in Japan but the pizza was fucking awful.
>>2857619Everywhere? It depends on what kind of pizza that you like and are used to. In general the quality is pretty high. One of the best pizza I ever had had eel on it.
>>2857619I tried the pizza in two restaurants, vomero pizzeria in Tokyo and Napule pizzeria in Kyoto and the pizza was really good. They even had wood-fired oven.
>>2857619??? They have a lot of traditional neapolitan pizza with wood fired brick ovens
>>2857631Hes used to microwaved domino's leftovers
If you want a good cheap pizza in tokyo there is spontini harajuku.
>>2854237Do you speak good japanese?
>>2857603You are beyond retarded. And that girl is mid... still out of your league tho
>>2857609Japan does Italian food better than the Italians. Except for buffalo mozarella that you rarely can find there. Their mozarella is like cream cheese without taste.
>>2857395Thanks. I try to capture comfiness in all my photos. >>2857422Pretty much this location in Hokkaido to me. Nobody shows up at the train station but in 1 hour intervals when it arrives. It was dead quiet as I walked on the road in front of ocean. Took a cozy hot chocolate in one of the fisherman bar. Met a super cute middle age hostess.
>>2858223glad someone replied :)
>>2858227It was fun.
>>2854680>A lot of the best restaurants are far from tourist areas and on the second or third floor of what looks like a tiny office building in the middle of nowhere.this was my experience. never eat on the ground floor unless its some sort of food alley
>>2854237Ever since I got here In Japan I've noticed there is one thing missing and it's the avalibilaly of canned food. It was a British invention so maybe non westerners aren't fond of it. In Common wealth countries you have a larger variety of canned food to meet your diet that you can buy at afforadble prices. In Japan you can only find fish or meat in cans, but vegetables are pretty much non existent. is it even like this in other asian countries?
>>2858255Canned Bamboo shoots (takenoko), mushrooms (shiitake, enoki), corn, and chestnuts are all pretty common.
Why are Brazilian nips a thing?
>>2858230thats cool anon.also>fell in love with a waitress at a sukiyaki restaurant in kyotosigh
>>2859379>fell in love with a waitress at a sukiyaki restaurant in kyotolmao tell us
>>2859403not much to tell, she was just super cute and friendly and i spent the entire time daydreaming about hanging out with her outside of work
>>2854237Daikanyama In ( 代官山 韻 ) , located in Shibuya, is one of Ryuji's favorite sushi restaurants, who happens to be one of Japan's biggest food vloggershttps://tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1303/A130303/13005711/Everyone who says you don't need training to become a sushi chef should watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyV7O3ABnUo
>>2854237Try some authentic squid sashimi
