Search results for “kansai”

Picture a small, plain white rectangle sitting on a plate next to a cup of tea. At first, it looks almost too simple to be a famous sweet. Then you bite into it. Local sources describe a light, crisp bite, and according to the maker, the...

In 2025, Japan exported about 45.9 billion yen of sake to a record 81 countries and regions. Meanwhile, the country's own sake drinkers kept buying less, as they have almost every year since 1973. Contemporary sake is the story of how th...

You pick up a bottle in a Japanese liquor shop and turn it around. On the back, you find a column of kanji and numbers: Junmai Ginjo, 55%, 15%, Yamada Nishiki, +3. So learning how to read a sake label means spotting which clues matter, a...

Say “Wagyu” to many travelers, and they picture beef so marbled it looks almost white. Iwaizumi Tankaku Beef (岩泉短角牛) tells a different story. The beef comes from Japanese Shorthorn cattle raised in Iwaizumi, Iwate Prefecture. It sta...

In 1697, roughly 640,000 casks of sake arrived in Edo by sea. Almost none of it came from Nada, although that district later dominated Japanese brewing. Edo period sake is not really a story about better brewing, since most of the key te...

It is December 30, and the department store food hall is packed. Lacquered boxes glow under the lights in black, red, and gold. Inside sit glossy black soybeans, golden chestnut paste, pink and white fish cake, bright prawns, and small d...

Kaizoku Ryori translates as pirate cuisine, and it means grilling seafood yourself at the table in southern Tokushima. Spiny lobster, abalone, turban shells, and scallops go straight onto a mesh grill in front of you. Some restaurants si...

Obanazawa watermelon, or Obanazawa suika (尾花沢スイカ), is a summer fruit from Obanazawa in northern Yamagata Prefecture. Growers there work in a mountain basin where August days turn hot, while the nights cool sharply. That gap is gene...

Japanese Christmas Cake: A Complete Guide From the classic strawberry shortcake to premium hotel creations — everything you need to know about Japan's most beloved holiday tradition Every year on Christmas Eve, almost every family in Jap...

Seki no To (関の戸) is a bite-sized Japanese sweet from Seki-juku, an old post town in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture. One small shop wraps smooth red bean paste in gyuhi, a soft rice dough, then dusts the whole thing in wasanbon sugar. That p...