The Ultimate Japanese Food Guide

Osaka (大阪市), located on Honshu (the main island), is the largest component of the Keihanshin Metropolitan Area, the second-largest metropolitan area in Japan. It’s one of Japan’s major financial, tourism, entertainment, and culinary centers. In Osaka’s busiest shopping district, there’s a large and brightly-lit Glico running man sign, which is one of the area’s most well-known landmarks. Ezaki Glico, a multinational food company, manufactures a wide variety of products, including Glico, Pocky, Pretz, Caplico, Papico, and many other snack brands loved worldwide.

Kyoto (京都市) forms the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. With a rich array of pristinely preserved castles, temples, shrines and tea houses, the ancient city of Kyoto is widely regarded as the cultural heart of Japan. In the late 1100s, Zen master Eisai brought methods of preparing powdered tea to Japan and started to grow tea trees in Kyoto, which is why the area is also known as the center of Japanese tea/matcha culture today. Boasting the highest quality matcha in the entire country and probably the entire world, Kyoto is home to many matcha flavored foods and beverages you can find on nearly every street corner.

Fukuoka (福岡市) is the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, situated on the northern shore of the Japanese island of Kyushu. It might not be as well-known as other major Japanese cities but Ichiran Ramen, one of the best ramen chains, began in Fukuoka in 1960 as a ramen stall named "Futaba Ramen". By 2017, Ichiran had expanded across Japan to more than 65 locations. Outside of Japan, they have restaurants in Hong Kong, Taipei, and Brooklyn, New York. Ichiran Ramen is considered the very best representation of Fukuoka Hakata ramen, which is one of Japan's three major types of ramen (the other two are Hokkaido Sapporo ramen and Fukushima Kitakata ramen.)

Fun fact: Japan has no official capital city because traditionally, the home of the Emperor is considered the capital. Due to its status as the largest urban economy in the world by gross domestic product and its central location, Tokyo is widely considered to be the de facto capital of Japan. Despite Tokyo's financial significance, it’s also known to the world as the home of otaku, people with all-consuming interests, particularly involving anime and manga. Akihabara, located in the heart of Tokyo, is the center of modern Japanese pop culture and a major shopping district for video games, anime, manga, electronics, computer-related goods and services.

Sapporo (札幌市), the largest city on the island of Hokkaido, is one of very few metropolises in the world with very heavy snowfall, enabling it to hold events and winter festivals with snow statues in a beautiful icy landscape. People usually associate Sapporo with its famous Shiroi Koibito (白い恋人, literally "white lover") , a white chocolate or milk chocolate langue de chat. Shiroi Koibito is popular because of the beautiful, romantic snow scenes in Hokkaido and also because of the unique expertise of its place of origin. Hokkaido produces the very richest, creamiest, purest milk in Japan and is well known for producing all of the best dairy products.

Japan is the undisputed home of the vending machine and currently has more than 5 million individual vending machines scattered throughout the country on street corners in cities, in train stations, and even in restaurants. You can get much more than regular sodas from those unique and unbelievable machines including hot soup, fresh juice, flavored milk, cold beers, gourmet coffee, full meals and even clothes!

Japan's convenience stores (called konbini, or conbini in Japanese) offer not only grocery items but also all kinds of daily necessities. They primarily sell foods, including a large range of meals, snacks and sweets, such as onigiri (rice balls), sandwiches, breads, chips, candy, obento (lunch boxes), instant ramen, microwave meals, fried chicken, nikuman and oden. For most Japanese, convenience stores are the go-to spots for all three meals on a typical day.

Japanese drugstores are known for carrying very affordable yet effective skincare, makeup, and house cleaning products. There are nearly 20,000 individual drugstore chains in Japan, including @cosme Store, which is the official offline branch of Cosme, Japan’s largest and most influential beauty product review site. Every year, Cosme gives out the Best Cosmetics Awards to the highest ranking cosmetic products.