Japan trip 2024- Kansai, Gifu, Nagano, Ishikawa prefectures, Tokushima 関西, 岐阜, 長野, 石川, 徳島

Our first big trip since Covid, and actually our first trip that’s not visiting relatives since we had the kids. We picked Japan and its a great destination- great food, great culture, and great scenery.

Our itinerary was:
Kyoto → Uji → Gifu → Kiso Valley → Around Nagano → Takayama → Kanazawa → Nara → Koya San → Osaka → Tokushima (Awa Odori).

Half the family actually went to Tokyo and Hakone beforehand but I didn’t join them.

We picked the locations/ sights first, then planned the food around the itinerary. Our best decisions were to hire a native to help us reserve the restaurants we wanted to go to ahead of time. We didn’t reserve every meal, of course, but it helped us get into many restaurants that were popular with the locals that we otherwise would have zero chance of getting in. It also helped us avoid the restaurants on the tourist trails.

The approach had some pitfalls, of course. We started planning for restaurants late. By that time, many popular restaurants were already fully booked for the dates that we wanted.

Why not just use online agent service? Working with someone local, and responsible provides a lot more flexibility. If x doesn’t work, then book y. If 7:00pm Tuesday doesn’t work, then book pick alternative dates and time. Some online agent service does that, but I don’t want them to pick alternative dates/ time for me since our itinerary was tight.

The other pitfalls were, we really wanted to honor our reservations, so that gave us less flexibility to adjust the itinerary on the fly. We ended up missing two reservations. We drove up the mountains in Honshu. Having very little sense of the distance between the spots and the time it takes to drive between them, it just didn’t work to book a restaurant in a different town/ city when we were somewhere else earlier in the day.

My personal sightseeing and food highlight:
Nara and Kanazawa.

My personal sightseeing and food lowlight:
Koya San. More on that later.

We tried to sample what each place was strong at. Seasonal ingredients specific to each location. Obviously I couldn’t discern all the subtleties since I was not from Japan. For example, there was a meal from Yamanouchi, Nagano prefecture where the wife was from Kyoto and the husband was from Kanazawa and they each injected flavor elements from each of their birthplace but its not easy to pick up the nuances.

We didn’t end up doing any haute cuisine- no gastronomic temples in the form of high end kaiseki, sushi, and yakitori. Since its a family trip I thought its more important to spend time with family than to ditch them for 3 hours and sit through 15 courses while jetlagged. Despite that, we still ended up eating many more casual kaiseki, sushi and yakitori meals, many of them also multi-course. We tried to vary what we eat- no ramen/ soba three meals in a row. Or no okonomiyaki all the time in Osaka.

On the average, the food was so well prepared and the flavors were so wonderful, I don’t think I can easily bring myself to eat Japanese outside of Japan ever again. Easily the best food trip ever for me.

Here are the places we ended up eating:

Kyoto:
鯛匠 HANANA/ Taisho HANANA
大極殿六角店 栖園 Seien
御料理 めなみ/ Oryori Menami
懐石カフェ 蛙吉/ Kaiseki Cafe Akichi
Gion Duck Rice

Uji:
つばめ屋/ Tsubameya
宇治茶道場 匠の館/ Takumi-no Yakata
中村藤吉平等院店/ Nakamura Tokichi

Gifu:
川原町 泉屋 Kawaramachi Izumiya
松風庵 at Nagaragawa Seiryu Hotel

Magome-juku:
萩乃屋 Haginoya

Nagano:
らぁめん みそ家 Ramen Misoya

Yamanouchi:
食堂よろしき日

Takayama:
支那そば 勝己 Shinasoba Katsumi
Center4 Hamburgers

Kanazawa:
風和利 Izakaya Fuwari
旬菜焼 はざま Hazama
割烹 魚常 Uotsune
金澤アンモナイト Izakaya Ammonite

Nara:
うな菊 奈良本店 Unagiku
粟 ならまち店 Awa Naramachi
おちゃのこ Ochanoko

Koya San:
遍照光院 Henjokoin
高野山デジタルミュージアム Koyasan Digital Museum

Osaka:
麺屋 丈六 Jouroku
福太郎本店 Fukutaro
たこ焼道楽 わなか 千日前 本店 Wanaka
燃えよ麺助 Moeyo Mensuke
Acidracines
料太 Ryota
Epais
炭火焼鳥きびたき Sumibiyakitori Kibitaki

Tokushima:
堂の浦 駅前店 Donoura Ekimae Branch

I will write about the food in separate topics.

Thank you every one who helped us plan this trip! And above all, thank you to Japan and all the locals who were so warm and hospitable. We had an amazing time!

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Why come?

On a less fastidious note, what did you enjoy about Kanazawa?

With that meal in Yamanouchi, we just randomly stumbled upon the place after a visit to the Jigokudani Monkey Park. We first went to Rausuan (そば処 羅臼庵) , a handmade soba place near the park because we had planned to eat some soba since its a Nagano specialty. But it sold out. And its already past 1pm. Everyone’s hot, tired and hungry. So we just started driving along the main country road, saw a town and started looking around randomly. The restaurant seemed to have good feedback so we dropped in. We just finished the food quickly and enjoyed them. If someone pointed out to me that there was a Kyoto or Kanazawa specific flavor at the time, I would have caught and remembered it. But since I only read about them in more detail after the trip, we don’t necessarily remembered the flavors enough to tell the differences any more.

Popular cities like Kyoto and Tokyo attracts many tourists, and they rightly do because they have so many highlights. But there are just so many people. They, including me, swamp the temples. What should be tranquil and meditative becomes a zoo. Overtourism, even though I am well aware I am a contributor, is a problem. In Tokyo, at least you have a whole city to spread the tourists. In Kyoto, seemingly everyone is at Arashiyama, Kinkaku-ji, Fushimi Inari and Kiyomizu-dera, etc.

Places like Kanazawa, to me, have just enough sights and have nice food as well. And its a lot more relaxing there. Things aren’t as artificial since the places, shops don’t exist for the tourists, so there is a certain degree of authenticity that big tourist highlights don’t have.

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I just added 長良川清流ホテル Nagaragawa Seiryu Hotel in Gifu to the list above. This is the only hotel that we stayed in that included breakfast. I almost forgot about the breakfast also when we checked in. And we were not expecting a 20-item breakfast, and then had to turn around and eat a pre-planned lunch 3 hours later. Both meals were good. But a little too much of a good thing too close apart…!

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