I really just came for the food

I hope you are not reading this post on an empty stomach.

Japanese food might be my favorite food of all time, if pizza didn’t already exist. I’ve only been to Japan twice but I’ve never tried anything I didn’t like.

I could happily eat sushi, ramen, udon, or Japanese curry three times a day. I didn’t go for any elaborate meals on this trip, and I really didn’t need to. Simple and inexpensive Japanese food can’t be beat in my humble opinion.

Even convenience store sushi is good

thank you 7/11 for late night sushi

Onomichi Ramen

this was one of the greasier meals

Udon in Hiroshima

Beef and rice bowl and miso soup at Yoshinoya. Yoshinoya is a Japanese chain serving simple rice bowls and curry. These places are great if you don’t know Japanese because you just put money in a vending machine and press a button with the picture of the food you want.

Curry Yakisoba in Osaka. Yakisoba is fried noodles with cabbage and pork and this restaurant had a specialty where you pour curry on top of the noodles.

Beef curry in Takayama, Gifu prefecture. It’s not the most traditional Japanese food you can get, but everyone eats it and this was the best Japanese curry I’ve ever eaten.

I would go back to Japan just for this curry

free peach juice from the wonderful owner at the curry restaurant

I’ve never seen a fried shrimp sandwich at an American McDonald’s, so I figured I would allow myself to eat fast food since it’s another “unique” experience.

classic McDonald’s

I had these lunch boxes a few times on long bullet train rides. They had sandwiches, eel with fried rice, dumplings, and grilled fish all in cutely packaged boxes at kiosks by the train platforms.

this one came with fried shrimp

I went to a Japanese bar and grill where there was no English menu to be found so we had to just point at things on the menu and hope we ended up with something delicious.