The best food I ate in Japan cost 78p from a corner shop

Nothing reminds you of your mortality like throwing your back out at an 800-year-old Japanese Buddhist temple.

But nothing helps you forget said mortality than eating chips sprinkled with seaweed that cost £1 from a supermarket straight after.

The brief for my four-night stay in Osaka, otherwise known as ‘Japan’s kitchen’, was simple: eat everything, even if my British self would assume it was bad.

I probably won’t, though. I eat my office lunches out of a bento box, I have kanji tattoos (I promise they don’t say ‘soup’) and I use a Japanese school bag for work.

In other words, I am obsessed with Japanese culture. I’m ready for it all.

The exchange of life

I fly from London Heathrow to Doha, Qatar, with Qatar Airways before landing at Kansai International, near Osaka, on a Sunday evening.

One jet-lagged sleep later, Yamada Yasuo, 59, takes me 50 miles away to Gokurakubashi, Kōyasan, in the Wakayama Prefecture.

‘Japanese food isn’t just for Japanese people, it’s for everyone,’ the Nankai Electric Railway assistant manager explains when I tell him Japanese is one of the most ordered takeouts in Britain.

‘Before Japanese people eat, we say, “itadakimasu“, which means we’re thinking of the farmers who grew the food, the fisherman who caught the fish and even the meat – the exchange of life. We’re thanking them for providing for us.’

Staying at a Buddhist temple means unlimited green tea

Kanae Watari, 30, of the Wakayama Tourism Federation, then greets me at Gokurakubashi.

We drive to Ren’gejo-in Temple, one of 50 shukubo, traditional pilgrim lodgings-turned hotels. Shukubo offers things you can’t search for on Airbnb: Futons, hot springs and unlimited green tea.

They also hold meditation sessions. At 5am on Tuesday, I leave my slippers outside the main hall to sit cross-legged by sleepy-eyed guests. Some tell me they’ve come from France just to stay at a Buddhist temple.

All eyes were on Reverend Ryusho Soeda, 78. He asks us to empty our minds.

Easier said than done. My therapist – and the one before that, and the one before that – has been pleading for me to do the same. I squint my eyes, only for them to swing open and my mind stresses about everything from the zeroes in my bank account to writing this story.

But Soeda helps me forget as he tells us to breathe.

Something that crept into my mind: How does Soeda look so good for a man pushing 80?

‘Cakes, mochi and chocolate,’ he half-jokes. ‘Sometimes I eat curry, boiled eggs, steaks, everything. And rice. Rice is all Japanese people eat.’

‘People spend thousands to eat a supermarket rice ball’

Wolfing red bean sweets that would have Soeda’s approval, we drive to a convenience store, or konbini in Japanese, for some gut-busting snacks.

There are 4,000 konbini in Osaka Prefecture, 45 for every 100,000 people. 

I wouldn’t recommend anyone fly to the UK to try a meal deal. But as Watari tells me over matcha at Café Sizuku: ‘There’s a joke that people spend thousands of dollars to eat a $1 rice ball in Japan.

‘Konbini are a big part of our culture. Even if you’re new to the area, you’ll easily find one and get anything you need.

‘You don’t really expect good food from konbini in other countries. But here, you can get good food for cheap. There’s no such thing as “bad” Japanese food, it’s just about what you like.’

A $1 rice ball works out at 78p for us Brits. God bless the exchange rate.

People will, however, spend money on sushi, like the kind riding conveyor belts at Daiki-suisan Dōtombori.

Chef Ambir Rajkarnikar, 42, hosts sushi-making seminars. He moved from Nepal as a 23-year-old student and has been at the restaurant for 18 years.

‘I’ve never looked back. Sushi is healthy, and more people love it,’ he says. ‘In Nepal, we never used to eat raw fish. Now everybody does.’

Ambir is a stickler for Japanese food. Even the ‘bad’.

‘Foreigners hate natto,’ he says, referring to fermented soybeans, ‘it’s stinky but I can’t get enough of it. I’m one of the special ones.’

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Food in the blood

The next day, I’m looking up from breakfast to see two giants battling.

The setting is The Sumo Hall Hirakuza Osaka, the latest place to watch the ancient Japanese sport over food, Yoshinori Tashiro, 47, a retired sumo wrestler who starred in John Wick: Chapter 4, tells me.

Our lunchboxes are known as ‘makunouchi bento’, a ‘between-curtains lunch’ once served between acts of the Kabuki theatre.

The lunches aren’t big enough for Tashori, he jokes. He eats five bowls of ramen ‘filled with rice’ and ‘200 sushi pieces’ every day.

I’ve soon got another man in front of me. He’s Osami Uemo, a 62-year-old Queen and Black Sabbath-loving chef at Naniwa kappo Kigawa, where I was having dinner.

Uemo has worked at the 60-year-old French-Japanese restaurant for 30 years, his father being its old owner. Food runs in his blood, but his favourite meal isn’t flashy, much like the skewers he cooks.

‘Rice and sashimi,’ he says, stressing that Japanese food is about using high-quality ingredients that you first eat ‘with your eyes’.

‘It’s the same as a lot of countries but Japan has a cooking style special to this land.’

Japanese wine: just as good as its famous sake

Japan is known for sake. Wine not so much. Yet it’s everywhere in Kashiwara, 12 miles from Osaka.

Grapes are even carved into wooden house beams, Eddie Taratarni, 44, who volunteers at the Kashiwara Winery, says. The website designer gives me a tour of the town’s hillside vineyards on my final morning in Japan.

‘Overseas wine has a kick but Japanese wine is gentle and meticulous,’ he says, including the red wine plum liquor I later buy. ‘I could drink a bottle of red every day.’

Eddie was born in another tourist hotspot: Hawaii.

‘Cities are fun but overcrowded,’ he says. ‘Go 20 minutes out and there’s a lot of beautiful nature. Osaka Castle is just the beginning.’

More people are about to experience Japan – and its food – as Osaka hosts the World Expo 2025, a gathering to celebrate a country’s achievements, from April 13 to October 13.

For Soeda, Japanese cuisine tastes good whether it’s microwaved in a supermarket or served in a family-owned restaurant.

‘We eat similar things to what we ate 1,000 years ago,’ he says. ‘It’s not like we try to stick with tradition, we eat it because it tastes good.

‘There’s no important reason for it. We just do what we like.’

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