Category: Food

There’s a wonderful crepe shop in the red brick warehouses in Hakodate that we’ve been to a couple times now. It has savory crepes too, but so far we’ve only had the dessert ones.

We got these from a patisserie in Sapporo. Shine Muscat grapes are like, one of the most popular fruits in Japan and you can find them in everything; I never would’ve thought to do a grape cake, but it was lovely. The giant strawberry mousse in the shape of a strawberry was also very good.

Cassie and I are both big fans of Japanese curry. For those of you who haven’t had it, it’s very different than a Thai or Indian curry; it’s thicker, sweeter, and barely has any spice to it at all. (Fun trivia: they consider it a Western food, because they got it via the UK, not…

This was some pork from an Okinawan restaurant we went to – our host ordered for us so I don’t know the exact name. But it was so outrageously tender, you could cut it with a wooden chopstick. Absolutely incredible.

This was a little pudding cup we got at a patisserie in a grocery store. There are so many treats like this; Japan takes the appearance of their desserts as seriously as they take the taste.

This is an otoshi – basically a small collection of snacks that you get at lots of restaurants as an appetizer – think like the chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant. This specific one comes from Ohana, our favorite restaurant, but it changes every time we go, there’s no set collection of snacks.

Soup curry is a lovely Hokkaido specialty; like a watered-down Japanese curry that is loaded with vegetables. This is from a small chain in Hokkaido called Ramai that we really recommend, but we’ve had soup curry a couple places now and it’s always one of my favorite dishes.

This is a tiny cake Cassie got me for Valentine’s Day. That’s right – she got it for me. In Japan, Valentine’s Day is a day when women give men chocolate – usually in the form of some sort of baked good. Men give women chocolate on White Day, March 14.

One of our favorite restaurants in Hakodate is this place Ohana, a Hawaiian restaurant. It’s really fun now having had Hawaiian food in Los Angeles, in Hawaii, and now in Japan, and getting to see the subtle variations between locations. This one had a distinctly Japanese spin, with loads of shredded nori, and as much…

We got this ice cream cone at a planetarium in Tokyo – obviously themed after outer space. I’m not normally a big fan of cotton candy, but the way it was stuffed into the cone so each bite got some of it and some ice cream? Spectacular.

Aren’t these so fun? There’s this donut place called Mister Donut that’s known for their decorated donuts – we got these two during a Pokémon tie-in event!

This wasn’t actually from Japan – I had this when we were in Korea. Tteokbokki is one of my favorite Korean dishes, but I was a little disappointed to discover that it’s apparently not as spicy in Korea – I think the tteokbokki I had in Florida was spicier!

This was a cake that our friend Florence made for me and a few other friends whose birthdays were near mine! Cassie decorated it with help from two small children who really, really wanted to squeeze the icing bag, and who did not care to direct the icing bag or try to follow any sort…

This was our first taste of Hokkaido – some ice cream cones from a Hokkaido foods fair in Tokyo. The one on the left is satsuma and cream, and the one on the right is strawberry and dark chocolate.

Kakigōri is Japan’s name for shaved ice, but they take it to a different level than, say, snowcones in the US. The ice is shaved much thinner, so it’s fluffy, and they usually use condensed milk along with flavored syrup, so it’s creamy and sweet. Matcha is my favorite!

One of the most common ways to get coffee here is with these little one-time pour-over packages; most hotels will have a couple in your room when you get there. Very easy and very fun!

This was one of the first meals I ate out in Japan, and it’s still one of the best! A bowl of ramen from a little shop on top of a big shopping mall; absolutely delicious. If you’re ever in Akihabara, it’s worth going to Yodobashi Akiba just for this!