JAPAN

Shirakawago is a UNESCO World Heritage Site famous for its traditional gassho-zukuri farmhouses. It’s located in the remote Shogawa River Valley in Gifu prefecture, close to the border with Toyama.

Kanazawa is affectionately called “Little Kyoto” for its beautifully preserved neighborhoods, its sprawling landscaped garden, and handful of interesting museums. It exudes the charm of Kyoto minus the crowds, which is always a good thing.

What the Takayama Hokuriku Pass does is allow you unlimited travel in central Japan so you can explore destinations in the Chubu region like Kanazawa, Fukui, Toyama, Nagoya, and Shirakawa-go. It’s so convenient!

Since 2014, we’ve been to Osaka a total of four times. Each visit gives us the opportunity to explore new restaurants and to continually update and refine this food guide. Our goal is to give you the best, most complete, and most diverse food experience in Osaka, and I believe we’ve done just that with the latest edition of this guide.

Kuromon Ichiba Market is a covered market in Osaka’s Chuo Ward, about a 3-minute walk from Nippombashi Station. It’s often referred to “Osaka’s kitchen” because it’s where many of the city’s chefs get their supplies.

Tokyo’s food scene is diverse so I wanted to come up with as well-rounded a food guide as possible. I consulted with locals, trusted food blogs, and restaurant review sites to come up with this list of 18 must-eat restaurants in Tokyo.

Sapporo is one of Japan’s most popular tourist destinations – famous for its miso ramen, Sapporo beer, and playing host to the Sapporo Snow Festival which draws in over 2 million tourists annually.

We first visited northern Kyushu in 2017 and got to enjoy regional specialties like champon, basashi, and everyone’s favorite Hakata ramen. Everything we had made an impression and got us excited to come back and explore more of the island and its myriad delicacies.

Because it was Japan’s first permanent capital, Nara remains a culturally rich and historically significant city, second only to Kyoto in its wealth of traditional temples and shrines. There you’ll find eight historical attractions that make up the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara.

An izakaya is a type of informal Japanese pub. They’re typically small and casual spaces where Japanese salarymen would get a drink and unwind after work. Jovial and relaxed in atmosphere, you can think of them as the Japanese equivalent to American taverns or Irish pubs, maybe even Spanish tapas bars.