Sushi with my girls: Hillary and Julia's Japan Post

Sushi spots and travel tips from two of the best travelers I know

Hi friends!

Today’s post is a little bit different—it’s a gift from two of my best friends to you. Hillary and Julia both make frequent appearances here and they both travel a lot. This fall, they headed to Japan (and spent many hours researching). I lived vicariously through their trip and woke up every morning excited to see their Instagram stories from each day, which included incredible bites, drinks and glimpses at a place I’ve never visited. I’m so excited to share their recommendations and will let them take it from here. It’s a long one so make sure to open in a separate browser to read the whole thing.

xo, Abigail

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We are Abigail’s friends Julia and Hillary. While we’ve been friends for a very long time, we didn’t know we would be great travel buddies until we went to Italy together last year. We realized we were very travel compatible – we both like the same kinds of activities, are up for packing our days full of stuff but also for taking a nap in the afternoon, and care a lot about eating great food.

We went to Japan for two weeks in October and had an amazing time. Planning this trip took a lot of research, which we did upfront to minimize the need to frantically Google stuff when we are at our destination. We created an extremely long Google Doc with ideas for everything from hotels to activities to restaurants, as well as set up a Google Maps list of all the spots we wanted to hit – this is key for seeing where things are in relation to each other. We were also lucky enough to have many people in our circles who had been to Japan before and gave us stellar recommendations.

We wanted to pass along our highlights to you, in case you have a trip to Japan in the works or you’re curious about Japanese food culture.

*Note that we are not vegetarians, so this recap will include meat and fish.

Food Highlights

Tokyo

Omoide Yokocho: We got off the plane and made our way to a series of narrow alleyways filled with izakayas. We will never know the name of the place we ultimately ate at, just that they grilled all of our yakitori to order in front of us and shaped our shrimp into a heart. The oysters were also excellent – 10/10 recommend trying soy sauce on your oysters instead of mignonette.

7-Eleven: Konbini (aka convenience stores) are everywhere in Japan and a core part of Japanese life. The three big ones are Lawson’s, Family Mart, and 7-Eleven. We tried them all, and 7-Eleven was our favorite. Japanese 7-Elevens are on a different planet from American stores. They have a wide selection of very good food, sweets, drinks, coffee, and so much more. We absolutely lost our minds over the 7-Eleven egg salad sandwich and split one basically every day for breakfast.

To give you an idea of how vast the selection is at 7-Eleven, here are just some of the highlights: onigiri, pizza buns (a steamed bun filled with mozzarella and tomato sauce), pork cutlet sandwiches, premade iced lattes with varying degrees of sweetness, cups of frozen fruit that you put into a smoothie machine, chocolate ganache ice cream bars, pumpkin cheesecake bites, sweet potato donuts, curry buns, fried chicken, and sticks of imitation krab. @Japanese 7-Eleven, please do a pop-up in NYC, you’ll make so much money!!!!

Kaitensushi Ginza Onadera: While technically billed as conveyor belt sushi (aka kaitenzushi), this was instead a big rectangular counter where customers placed their orders on tablets in front of them and the chefs served each piece a la carte. We discovered that eel in Tokyo basically dissolves in your mouth, and we were hooked. Fun fact: toward the end of our meal, we learned we were sitting next to the general manager of Peter Luger in Brooklyn, who was in town celebrating the second anniversary of their Tokyo location. 

Sumibiyakiniku Nakahara: This was easily a highlight of the trip. At Nakahara, the chef grills many different cuts of wagyu beef right in front of you – and every single bite is outstanding. They’re known for serving three different cuts of beef tongue, and the courses included everything from sirloin to stomach. The katsu sandwich at the end is one of the best things we’ve ever eaten. At the end of the meal, the chef asked if we were still hungry (we weren’t, but who’s going to refuse more food?) and had one of the cooks prepare his specialty onigiri for us. (Make a reservation in advance using Table Check.)

Sushi Ya: High-end omakase is a classic Japan experience for any sushi lover. There are many, many places for omakase in Tokyo and it’s an expensive meal, so Hillary spent literal hours poring over all the options. Sushi Ya met the qualifications of 1) having really great reviews and 2) being not impossible to book. At an omakase meal, the chef serves the freshest fish of the day and slices/prepares it right in front of you, handing you one nigiri or dish at a time. This kind of omakase is definitely for the adventurous eater; for example, one of the courses was octopus served alongside monkfish liver. Some of the highlights included bonito-smoked tuna, melt-in-your-mouth eel, and a dish with uni and two types of crab. (Make a reservation in advance. We used Pocket Concierge.)

Ekibenya Matsuri Gransta: Ekiben are lunch boxes sold at train stations to bring on your journey. This ekiben shop at Tokyo Station has more than 200 varieties of bento boxes, representing regions across Japan; normally, you can only find regional food at these stores, so this is an opportunity to try food from anywhere in the country. It was both overwhelming and so much fun to explore all the options. We don’t know what came in ours (Google Translate only goes so far) but everything was very good.

Pizza Marumo: You might be thinking “pizza…in Tokyo?” Yes. Pizza in Tokyo. One bite of the clam pie and you’ll understand. We sat at the counter and watched the chef craft these gorgeous pizzas from scratch, including hand-slicing garlic to order and rolling out the softest-looking dough we’ve ever seen. We also recommend the Bismarck 2.0 and Japanese black chili pizzas. (Make a reservation in advance.)

Fuunji: We had a lot of ramen on our trip, and this takes the top spot. Fuunji specializes in tsukemen (dipping ramen). You get a plate of perfectly cooked noodles, dip them into their signature sauce (creamy chicken soup + dried fish powder), and slurp to your heart’s content. It was an intense, delicious flavor unlike anything we’d had before. After you finish the noodles, there’s hot broth available to dilute the sauce and drink it up. (There are always lines here, but they get diners in and out quickly. Get there around when it opens and the wait won’t be too bad.)

Osaka

Tempura Tarojiro: Turns out you can make basically anything into tempura. We had gigantic tempura-fried oysters and wagyu tempura, two of Tarojiro’s specialties, along with sweet potato, shrimp, octopus, and much more. The chef himself looked like an elderly college professor and fried everything in a huge vat of oil right in front of us.

Honke Shibato: We discovered the existence of this 300-year-old unagi restaurant before leaving for the trip, and Julia called it “ancient eel” for weeks. Fortunately, the eel itself was very fresh and not at all ancient. It’s very out of the way but extremely worth it. We went for lunch and had an amazing spread of rice and delicious, crispy-but-not-too-crispy unagi.

Okonomiyaki Sakaba O: Even though there is an abundance of great restaurants in Japan, it was pretty common to wait in line to get in somewhere. We waited quite a while for dinner here, but luckily we had pregamed with some takoyaki (fried dough balls with octopus inside). One of Osaka’s signature dishes is okonomiyaki, a savory pancake typically filled with cabbage, meat, and seafood. We split an okonomiyaki here with all the fillings (scallops, pork, prawns, and cabbage) and fixings (Japanese BBQ sauce, kewpie mayo, and bonito flakes) – and it was worth the wait.

Kyoto

Nishiki Market: This narrow shopping street is filled to the brim with amazing stalls to get delicious bites. We ate char-grilled scallops with salmon roe, tempura eel and shrimp, takoyaki, and …. a local specialty of octopus on a stick with a quail egg inside its head. We also stopped in a spice shop to get a spicy yuzu blend for our favorite hot sauce connoisseur, Abigail.

Anzukko Gyoza Bar: Three words: gyoza tasting menu. Anzukko is famous for gyoza cooked in a cast iron pan so the bottom gets crispy and lacy. In addition to that, we got a set menu that included gyoza filled with everything from seafood to camembert. The menu concluded with a bowl of stir-fried noodles that were way better than they had any right being.

Tai Sushi: Here’s the thing about us. We love sushi. So much. When we say Tai Sushi was phenomenal…it really was. This was a top three meal of the trip – if not our overall favorite. Tai Sushi is a small shop where you sit on tatami mats around a sunken sushi counter and eat the most delicious fish imaginable. Every bite had us turning to each other with faces of pure amazement that something could be that good. We started with the standard nigiri set and then ordered repeats of our favorites, which included the fatty tuna, uni, and ikura. (Get there at least 15 minutes before it opens at 5pm; otherwise, the wait is very long. Cash only.)

Frontier Bar: We wanted to get a drink after dinner and were overwhelmed with options; a quick Google search led us to this tiny spot in what looked like an old apartment building. Hillary had two very good gin and tonics, and Julia discovered that she – like every guy on a Hinge date in Brooklyn – enjoys Japanese whiskey.

George’s Fried Chicken: We want to shout from the rooftops about how good this place is. It’s a short walk from the main sights in Arashiyama, a popular tourist destination in Kyoto with bamboo forests and monkeys. George fries the chicken katsu cutlets to order and plays the same music our dads listen to in the car. The Japanese curry is excellent and so are the vibes.

Nara 

奈良うどん ふく徳: If you find yourself in Nara, you’ll probably work up an appetite petting deer and screaming about how cute the babies are (or is that just us?). Google Maps led us to this husband-and-wife-owned udon shop that 1) doesn’t have an English name and 2) doesn’t have an English menu. It didn’t matter because we still managed to order delicious udon soup and tempura.

Souvenirs

We went into this trip knowing we’d check a bag on the way home (we are carry-on only girls) because of all the shopping we anticipated.

Some of our souvenir highlights include:

• A high-end Japanese chef’s knife engraved with Hillary’s name on it

• Many tubes of the Nivea Rich Care & Color in Cherry Brown – the shade is shockingly flattering on everyone

• Chopsticks

• Sunscreen! Specifically Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Essence SPF50+ (recommended to us by Abigail, Ed note: proud to spread my sunscreen agenda)

• Keychains and magnets that looked like realistic pieces of sushi and shrimp tempura

• Various Japanese beauty and skincare products, including the Shiseido Fino hair mask, Hada Labo Gokujyun Premium Lotion, and Heroine Make Waterproof Mascara.

Cooking and eating at home

Many people have asked us if our trip has made it harder to order our regular takeout sushi at home. It hasn’t – mostly because the spicy tuna rolls at our neighborhood sushi places are great on their own and are so different from the sushi we had in Japan.

The only major downside has been discovering that the wasabi served by most casual U.S. sushi spots is a horseradish mixture. We had the real stuff in Japan, and it is far superior in flavor.

Tips + tricks

• Many of the best things we ate were at restaurants that were hard to find from the outside. Google reviews often have pictures of the restaurant’s exterior, which was helpful in finding places that only had signs in Japanese or were on higher floors of buildings.

• Try to eat lunch before 2pm, as restaurants often close in the afternoons. We learned this the hard way when we were hangry.

• Tipping is not customary in Japan because people actually get paid living wages – what a concept!

• Slurping your noodles is not only socially acceptable, but highly encouraged.

• Ice cream is everywhere. Our favorite was Cremia – an extremely creamy and rich soft serve that comes in a thin sugar cookie cone.

• The Google Translate app is your best friend! Use the camera features to translate menus!!

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. We are happy to offer recommendations of sites and hotels — feel free to reach out. We’re @hillwass and @juliareinstein on Instagram and twitter.