• cheap but good food
• dense city lifestyle
• temples/shrines
• beautiful gardens
• perhaps some nice scenic coasts
• stunning architecture – old and new
• shopping

So here’s my recommendations. One a day, starting with…

CHEAP BUT GOOD FOOD

Much contrary to its reputation as an expensive country, Japan can be a relatively inexpensive place to eat. Ramen shops are cheap and plentiful, while most sushi restaurants are at least good, and often less than a third of the price of home. Izakayas (Japanese pubs) are much underestimated, I suspect, by foreigners, and an interesting experience. There are many chains of izakaya (such as WaraWara) in Japan which serve a unique and tasty kind of cuisine designed for sharing, and more to the point, consumption with beer. I also quite like yoshoku restaurants, which don’t often get copied in the West. They feature Japanese adaptations of Western cuisine, such as omuraisu (an omelette stuffed with savoury rice) and intriguing Japanese variations on Italian spaghetti themes.

Some specific recommendations.

For sushi, the big sushi train on Omotesando more or less opposite Omotesando Hills (from memory) may look like a tourist trap but is actually quite high-quality. Also in Shibuya station, down the West End, there is a sushi restaurant that perennially has a very long line in front of it. This is a reasonably reliable sign anywhere in Japan that something is very good.

For ramen, I like Fukurou Ramen （ラメン梟）(Ginza 2-10, on Maronnier Dori) is killer. Try their akamiso tonkotsu ramen. You might need them to help you with the ticket machine (at a lot of smaller food shops in Japan, you buy a ticket from the machine and present it to the cheffing staff. Not quite sure why.)

For okonomiyaki, try Shichifukujin (七福神）in Shibuya. If you want to know where it is, type “okonomiyaki shibuya” into Google and it is the first thing that comes up.

For yoshoku, Shiseido Parlour in Ginza is supposed to be good, then there is also Renga-tei (Ginza 3-5-16) which is where omuraisu began, it is actually not the tastiest I have ever had, but it is interesting for unrenovated nostalgia.

For tempura, you could go high-class, or you could go to Tendon Tenya（天丼）, a fairly ubiquitous chain of tempura restaurants which also has a more glitzy number in Ginza (more swishy than its other stores) at Ginza 3-7 or 3-8, again on Maronnier Dori if I’m not mistaken.

Perhaps more important is what to avoid. Western food (and Chinese food too, actually) can be a hit and miss affair in Japan, unless you know where you’re going, it can often be a better bet to stick to the Japanese style. That having been said, Yoshinori is a chain of restaurants you see everywhere of fairly questionable culinary quality, maybe skip them. Same for the local burger chains Rotteria and Mos Burger… I think you might need to be Japanese to fully appreciate them. Don’t eat in places where no-one else is.

If you are looking to go a little upmarket, most department stores have a collection of restaurants on an upper floor and these tend to be a higher standard of decor and food, and a commensurately higher price point. Beware some of these restaurants are very expensive.

And if you want to go right down market, then there is always the convenience store, which often has a surprisingly large collection of varied foods that they will be only too happy to heat up in the microwave if you say something like “atatamete kudasai” and look dumb and foreign…

Lastly, good coffee. Motoya Coffee is wonderful, see their website for locations using Google Maps. Dean and Deluca also have branches in Shibuya, Marunouchi, Roppongi and Shinagawa which serve good coffee. Tokyo-style coffee comes in tins and bottles from vending machines. Pay attention to the red and blue stripes below the item: this determines whether your beverage arrives hot or cold!

s.komatsu bills itself as gluten-free, lactose-free dining, and has a big evangelistic sign about this out the front, which probably turns off some. And then has a really poorly-set-out menu-concept: too many pages and options and the prices are tucked right at the back and you have to choose between two dining concepts, the dining room up the top and the bistro down below. All this is abetted by bumbling explanation by the hosts.

We elected for the full dining whammy upstairs. It is a very nice, modern space they’ve inherited, I think, from a previous tenant. The music is truly terrible – some “restaurant background music” CD compilation with orchestral versions of pretty much every tacky song ever written: a bit of Elton, Barbara, Bette, Michael, I think even some Mariah. Oh and Richard Clayderman-esque versions of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto (oh all right, only the theme bit from the third movement) and the Pathetique Sonata (the middle movement). The music was almost so bad it was good. Poor S, just having bundled off night shift the night before, wasn’t so sure. Mental note to self: after night shifts, keep the meals short and locations unchallenging.

So with all of that the food was mostly nice – good sashimi and tempura, and I had shabu-shabu which I hadn’t had before. Well-meaning service, OK wine, good wineglasses, weird dessert. But only two covers for a whole floor on a Friday night? I hope for their sake they do better when the footy’s on…