Japan

When a fellow food enthusiast told me he had a spare seat at Tempura Naruse for lunch the following day, I didn’t think twice. I…

Tokyo has an extraordinary number of former private residences, many of which are now open to the public. Once home to writers, artists, industrialists and…

Japan rewards curious diners like nowhere else. It has tiny neighbourhood counters that have perfected a single dish over generations, family-run restaurants hidden above train…

I first discovered the fabulous world of depachika over 20 years ago, when I came to Tokyo for modelling. I had never seen anything quite…

Asaba has been welcoming travellers for more than five hundred years. Impressive on first thought, but even more so once you consider what that actually…

Wellness trending in a glass Matcha has become the drink of the new  generation - luminously green, photogenic, and, perhaps most importantly, healthy. Among younger…

NOT A HOTEL began with a hotel that never got built. In Aoshima, a seaside town in Miyazaki that had once been a popular honeymoon…

The last 140 years have seen a slow and steady increase in interest and production of wine in Japan. Initiated under the Meiji government as…

I had the pleasure of joining sushi master Hidefumi Namba at Toyosu Market, the world's largest fish market in Tokyo. Beyond his standing among the…

I first experienced kaiseki in Kyoto nearly twenty years ago, at the celebrated Kikunoi, run by the third-generation chef Yoshihiro Murata, widely regarded as one…

Written by Roni Xu Mori. Soft spaghetti, sausage, green pepper, and ketchup.   Naporitan is everything a pasta purist is trained to dislike. Yet in Japan, one…

This article was first originally published in Mizanplas #1: Japan and Spain, the debut issue of the magazine dedicated to thoughtful writing on wine, gastronomy…

Written by Pablo Alomar Salvioni. Beyond pairings with sushi, sake is the perfect drink to bring out the full flavour of any dish. While sake…

Chef Tetsuya Asano is the head chef at TOKI, the signature restaurant of HOTEL THE MITSUI, Kyoto, located opposite the 17th-century Nijo Castle.  Seating forty-four…