One of the main reasons to love staying at an Airbnb apartment is that you get lots of great recommendations for shops or restaurants around you. When we rented a small house in the Shinjuku area in Tokyo, we were…
Hamburg Special Places: Ramen Bar Zipang
There are not many good and authentic Japanese restaurants in Hamburg, so when I heard about the Ramen-Bar Zipang first, I was skeptical whether it would actually serve real ramen the way I knew it from Japan. I’ve had ramen…
Tokyo Foodie Tour: Kyorakutei
When we were looking for a great place for lunch, we once asked our Airbnb hosts for recommendations. They gave a few really good ones, but one that stood out was this small place named Kyorakutei that served hand-cut soba…
Kyoto Foodie Tour: Donguri Tonchin
On our last day in Kyoto, we decided to try our luck with the restaurants in the immediate neighborhood of our Airbnb apartment. So we didn’t look up any restaurants, as with the Isshin, but instead just wandered around the…
Kyoto Foodie Tour: Isshin
A culinary highlight of our trip to Japan and a restaurant awarded with two Michelin stars, let me introduce the Isshin in Kyoto! It’s common for restaurants in Japan to specialize in one dish (ramen, sushi or yakitori) or in…
Kyoto Foodie Tour: Hassunba
Located in the popular Nabeya-cho area in Kyoto, close to Ponto-cho and the bustling Shijo-Kawaramachi intersection, you can find this little treasure just by taking one turn off the main popular streets. The Hassunba is a tiny dining bar, with seats…
Tea house at the river: Kinkese Chaya
For our trip to Japan in 2015 I roughly sketched out an itinerary with places that I wanted to visit, leaving enough room to deviate from it whenever we felt like it. So before visiting Himeji and its beautiful white…
Kaiseki dining at Omotenashi Fukutei
Kaiseki is a traditional Japanese multi-course dinner serving traditional dishes arranged in a beautiful way in lacquer boxes (bento) or small bowls. It’s a highly refined style of cooking that was taken before a tea ceremony. Kaiseki dinners are kept…
Tokyo Foodie Tour: Harajuku Gyoza
After getting back to Tokyo from Hakone and hiking the Kyukaido, we went straight to Harajuku for dinner. The boyfriend had found a place specializing in gyoza (dumplings, cooked or steamed) on foursquare, imaginatively named Harajuku Gyoza. It’s a very…
Tokyo Foodie Tour: Himawari Sushi
Finding a good Kaiten-Zushi restaurant, or conveyor belt sushi restaurant, in Tokyo is not such a hard thing to do. Almost every place in Japan serves better sushi than you can find in your typical sushi restaurant in Germany! Even…