Himeji to Hakata

Japan consists of 4 major islands and Kyushu is the southwestern one. Kyu-shu literary means "9 states" in Japanese. It used to consist of 9 states, but there are actually only 7 prefectures now. Each of these 7 prefectures has a distinctively unique food culture, so that I decided to mostly focus this visit on Kyushu.

Starting at the end of the year, Japan enters its biggest holiday season. It's January 3rd today and it's not the end of the holiday season, so I wasn't expecting large crowds on the bullet trains (Shinkansen). Yet the train I was on was almost full. I left Tokyo in the morning and stopped by Himeji, Hyogo to see Himeji castle. On the way back to the train, I headed to Yamagi, a very cozy anago restaurant. Anago is a salt water eel and it can be eaten in many areas of Japan. Himeji is one of them. The preparation is pretty much the same as unagi, fresh water eel. But it seems anago is seasoned more lightly than unagi is.

This is the standard anago bowl, which is steamed. Topped with wasabi.

Anago three ways, steamed, grilled and braised. The accompanying soup can be used to make a quick rice porridge/soup at the end of the meal with the last small portion of rice and anago.

Then, I hopped on another shinkansen to the gate city of Kyushu, Hakata. It's the largest city in Kyushu and it is one of the foodiest cities in Japan. In this trip, Hakata is going be a hub point, so I will come back here a couple more times.

The first restaurant in Hakata is Hirao, a local chain tempura eatery. Like many ramen restaurants in Japan, you need to buy tickets from the ticketing machine at the front door. You can choose one of the set menus or order a la carte. The cooks bring the tempura to each seat as soon as it's fried, piece by piece. The most important quality for tempura is the crispness of the batter. If it's fried long enough, it becomes crispy and stays crispy for long time. However, the items inside the batter are likely to be overcooked. Crispy batter and soft and moist items inside make a good tempura. But the excess moisture inside the batter makes the batter soggy pretty quickly. Because Hirao serves tempura immediately after it's fried, it can be brought to the customers in its ideal state.

The tempura set comes with rice, miso soup and tentsuyu (dipping sauce). The cook leaves the super fresh tempura on the metal tray.

After the meal, I found a local craft brewery, Fukuoka Craft Brewery. Their beers were pretty good but one of the best I had there was one of the guest beers from Ushitra Brewery, called Ashura Triple IPA. Although it is a triple IPA, it didn't taste as sweet as other triple IPAs that I've had before. It was very hoppy and refreshing.

There are so many other good foods in Hakata. I'm so glad that I'll have more opportunities to eat here.