We recently returned from 2 1/2 weeks in Japan – Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto. Our first trip. And I have some observations as a first time traveler which might be useful if you're planning a first trip.

First - the major cities in Japan are really, really big. Osaka is perhaps the size of New York - but metro Tokyo - with a population of over 35 million - is huge. Travel distances can be formidable - and travel can be difficult during rush hours. So don't get your heart set on some restaurant you heard about that's on the other end of town from wherever you are. I've heard there are 100,000 restaurants in Tokyo. There are lots and lots of good ones - and quite a few great ones. Pick places that are close to where you are.

Second - especially at the higher end - lunch is frequently a bargain compared to dinner. So look at lunches. Won't be a problem for most visitors from places like the east coast of the United States for the first week. You'll be starving at noon for a dinner-like meal - and asleep well before a fashionable dinner dining time.

Third - for English speakers - there may be a beaten tourist path - but we didn't find it. English isn't spoken at most of the restaurants we dined at. My husband studied Japanese for a year before this trip (he's good at languages) - and I think it's a good investment of time to learn at least a bit before you go. Invest in a few books for eating - like Robb Satterwhite's "What's What in Japanese Restaurants" and Richard Hosking's "Dictionary of Japanese Food".

If you don't speak Japanese – all is not lost. There are thousands of restaurants with "plastic food" in the windows. Lots are very very nice. You can just point at meal 1, 2 or 3 and off you go. At high end restaurants – there will frequently be 1 – or perhaps a few "set menus". If you know you're going to a high end restaurant – talk with the concierge at your hotel about choosing your menu in advance if there are choices so you'll know what you're getting for $100 - $200 or $300. Your concierge can phone the restaurant in advance and let it know what menu you want.

And do not hesitate to take advantage of anyone you know - or think you might want to meet - when dining. Invite anyone and everyone who lives in Japan to dine with you. You won't regret it. We dined with many people. Including the son of a friend of ours who lives in northeast Tokyo (and his family). He took us to his "local" Chinese restaurant - owned by "Iron Chef Chinese" Chen. Great fun. If you guess a place like this would be a tourist place - guess again. I'm glad he and his wife spoke fluent Japanese.

Fourth - I recommend the "department store food basements" for sampling various kinds of foods. Although if you don't speak any Japanese - you probably won't be able to find out what you're eating unless you can identify it by sight. The food basements are also great for take-out on nights when you're too tired to go to a restaurant. The food basements are simply amazing - a tourist attraction in their own right. I could have spent days in them. They are one of the things I miss most about Japan now that I'm home.

Fifth - we encountered a huge number of incredibly friendly helpful people at restaurants (both chefs and staff). What we couldn't communicate in terms of spoken language - we did with hand signs (like we'll take one of what he's having – pointing at the person sitting next to you). Note that this isn't recommended at very high end restaurants – many of which are small places where you are served at counters - when they're busy (and all we went to were busy). For these restaurants - I recommend inviting a friend who speaks fluent Japanese to join you for dinner . Robyn

Sounds like you had a great trip! Were you able to meet up with Robb S. while you were there?

It was a fabulous trip. My husband and I love great cities - and Japan certainly seems to have its share. Will be a very hard act to follow.

We did manage to meet Robb S. when we were both in Kyoto. He recommended and we went to this restaurant for lunch: Roan Kikunoi. It was excellent kaiseki with French influences - with comfortable seating for my husband and his knee brace . I 'm sure we wouldn't have stumbled on it ourselves. My husband and I very much enjoyed dining there - and we also enjoyed meeting Robb and talking with him about food in Japan and elsewhere.

Just to give people an idea of the differences in menu prices between lunch and dinner - I pulled out the brochure. The 4 fixed lunch menus range in price from 4200 to 10500 yen. The 4 fixed dinner menus range in price from 10500 yen to 18900 yen. My husband and I frequently have lunch as our big meal of the day when we're home - and we did the same quite a bit in Japan.

I do hope some of my suggestions help other people. It is unbelievable how much I absorbed from the messages on this board before our trip. When I told my husband about this - that - or the other thing - he said "how did you know that" - and I said I read about on Flyertalk . Robyn

Glad you enjoyed yourself.

It sounds as if you did everything right!

Robyn,

Would a non-Japanese speaker be able to dine here (i.e., any English menus, pictures, or displays)?

Also, any Osaka recommendations? I believe you also went there, correct?

Thanks! We are so looking forward to our first trip to Japan (Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara).

Regards,
CHG

Had to be a good trip if you have all this talk about food experiences

Glad you had a great time. I will be back in Tokyo in a week and can't wait to find some more restaurants to try.

We never saw a menu. When the concierge made the reservation - the restaurant asked us to choose which set menu we wanted in advance. The concierge was able to explain some of the menu differences - but not all. So we just took pot luck in terms of picking one. Our party was speaking Japanese to the server - so I don't know whether he spoke English. But - if you make a reservation through the concierge - and pick a menu in advance -I don't think any English is necessary (although it probably wouldn't hurt to be able to say things like "hello" and "please" and "thank you").

We had 4 different dinner experiences in Osaka. First was street food at the cherry blossom festival. I recommend it for people who are in town then.

Then we ate one night at the tempura restaurant at the hotel (Ritz Carlton). It's an intimate place (mabe 10 seats) and we were the only people dining there that evening (most of the hotel guests preferred the Japanese steak restaurant). It was excellent - but if you're not a hotel guest - you might want to try tempura elsewhere. No English spoken. No menu in English. We communicated with our limited Japanese and by means of a big English food dictionary the chef had (he used it to explain dishes to us).

Another night we ate at a kushi-katsu (which is basically fried things) place - Mogami. It was a Friday night - and the place was wall-to-wall with office workers celebrating the end of the week. The interesting thing about this restaurant is that there's a fixed order of courses (total of 36 in all). Everything from prawn to asparagus to mushrooms to eel to pork to tofu. You name it - they fry it . And you can stop whenever you want. The more you eat - the more you pay. The menu is in English and Japanese - and there is a written restaurant description in English too. So - although I don't think that anyone at the restaurant spoke more than a word or two of English - and I didn't see any non-Japanese people the night we dined - this is an informal place where it is very easy to eat without speaking Japanese. It is also about as close to a "tourist restaurant" as we got. If you're not Japanese - they put a little flag from your country of origin at your table setting (we were the only people with flags ).

Last - we went to a fairly new "French" kaiseki restaurant – Kawazoe. The chef/owner worked at a more famous restaurant – Kahala – where we were unable to get a reservation – so the concierge thought we would like this. And we did (although the only French thing about the meal was a lonely piece of French bread). There is a set menu – and it has been translated into English on a piece of paper. But that English is about all you're likely to find here unless – like us – you wind up seated next to a Japanese person who was educated at Oxford! Note that we did wind up in a few "non-English" restaurants where other patrons spoke various amounts of English - and the other patrons were always friendly and willing to help us. Again – this is a small place – perhaps 12 seats.

By the way - if you go to the Osaka Aquarium (which we liked a lot) - there is a food market next door. And a section of that food market has a "street" which recreates parts of Osaka a while back (you have to look for the "street" behind restaurants like KFC). There are perhaps 6 nice inexpensive "plastic food" restaurants there. Poke around and I'm sure you'll have a good lunch (we did - Chinese dumplings).

I think your choice of restaurants has a lot to do with your personal comfort levels. In general – I think that if no one in my party spoke any Japanese – I wouldn't hesitate to go to any of the larger places – like Mogami. Or smaller bustling places for informal meals. But I might feel uncomfortable in a higher-end more formal restaurant where it's just the chef – a server – and perhaps 10 other patrons sitting at a counter. I suggest discussing possible choices with your hotel concierge staffs. I found ours were excellent in terms of matching up our language skills (which varied depending on who we were dining with) with appropriate restaurants. Robyn

I think it is almost impossible to eat badly in Japan. Food was certainly one of the highlights of our trip! Robyn

I find eating to be one of the major hassles when travelling, when it's time I just wander about where I am until I find somewhere that looks good. Usually in a food court type setting.

I would also suggest to folks about to travel to Japan for the first time, visit a Japanese restaurant at home a few times to get the basics down. In a pinch, you can always order tonkatsu or tempura if you know what they are beforehand. And yes, it seems that almost every burg in America now has a Japanese restaurant (Indian too). In fact, I saw an article recently that indicated a lot of Chinese restaurants are changing over to Japanese or adding it to their menus because the profit margins are higher.

Do you travel alone - probably for business? As far as Japan (or other countries) go - do you not speak the language(s)? That could explain it. I can recall many a miserable lonely meal even when traveling "at home" (in the US) on business. My husband recalls the same. Every time either of us had a swell business trip - seems like the other was never free to go along. And then there were the "non-swell" trips - like spending a week alone in Sebring FL - or a week alone in Phoenix in August. Or going to the Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta (I had to go to downtown Atlanta often on business many years ago) - and - as a woman traveling alone - I was almost always seated - before I complained - in a basically empty dining room - at the table right next to the kitchen door!

At least in Japan - there is great take-out in the food basements. Try doing that in Sebring FL!

We have a single friend in the US who likes sushi because he can always eat at the counter - where - although he is "alone" - he isn't "alone" if you know what I mean. You can do this in Japan - but - if you don't speak Japanese - you are basically alone at most places.

As for dining at Japanese restaurants at home - living in the Jacksonville FL area - what we have here isn't like anything in Japan. Closest I've found to anything approaching authentic Japanese is a place called Ran-getsu in Orlando (a branch of a restaurant in Tokyo). When we ate tempura for the first time in Japan - we didn't know what to do with the little bowls of sauces - things to put in the sauces - and salt (in Osaka - they gave us 5 kinds of salt !). We'd never seen any of this before. So you basically tell the staff that you're Japanese food impaired - and let them instruct you. At that first tempura restaurant - my husband put about 10 times the amount of stuff you're supposed to put in the sauce in the sauce - the (young female) staff giggled - then they whisked his concoction away very discreetely - and showed him how to do it correctly.

Anyway - I recommend always trying to get together with people to dine when you're on the road. But - based on past experience - I know that - more often than not - when you're traveling on business - it can't be done. And it's a bummer. Robyn

This is pretty much what I do, too - but by choice. I love exploring the neighborhoods in search of places where the locals eat. I don't do expensive or fancy or anyplace that requires a menu unless I'm out with someone. For day to day dining, I just roam the alleys until I find someplace that looks good and dive in. My Japanese is pretty basic, but I never go hungry and usually find at least one new thing every time I go. If all else fails, I just order kyo no ranchi and eat whatever is on special that day. If there is more than one choice - set A or set B, I just pick one and enjoy the surprise. Of course, I'm pretty easy going when it comes to meals - if it has stopped wriggling, I'll eat it. Except natto!

JR

Goto the department store food halls located in the basement floors. Excellent food choices and interesting anyways. English only is not too difficult in Japan. When purchasing anything you can go by the numbers and the western hotels all have excellent english speaking staff.

No english spoken in a restaurant in the R-C? Amazing. If there were one place I would expect English, this would be it...

Not a word.

Not a word at the bar either (where you would perhaps most expect it). I liked the young female bartender. She always asked me how my day had gone - but I had to do "show and tell" with pictures from my camera to communicate.

Pretty much limited or no English in other parts of the hotel - except for the concierge staff - which spoke ok (but not fluent) English.

On the other hand - ask yourself - if you went to any RC in a major city like New York - how much Japanese would you find outside the concierge desk? I live in an area that attracts large groups of Japanese golf tourists - and I suspect our Japanese is about the most they'll find when they get here. Assuming they run into us (and if they don't - they'll generally find no Japanese spoken at all).

Think you also have to keep in mind that Osaka is pretty much a business - not a tourist - city. Most western people who wind up in Osaka are by and large there for business - and probably possess some degree of skill in Japanese. Robyn

This actually surprises me, too. I know a few people who work at high-end hotels in Japan and they tell me that management pushes hard for English ability among front-line personnel. Front desk, concierge, etc. I sat next to a young Japanese lady on one of my flights back to the states. Her English was not bad, just a bit slow. Between that and my equally halting Japanese, we had a nice conversation much of the way home. She worked at a hotel and told me her employer was sending her to a specialty English school in New York at company expense to improve her ability to deal with English-speaking tourists. When I was at the Nagoya Hilton last month, everyone at the front desk and the executive floor club were very fluent. I'm surprised that the R-C was so different.

JR