To get the most out of a trip to Japan, you really need to like Japanese food as well as being at least a little adventurous in what you are willing to eat. It's possible to survive without this but you will definitely be missing out on one of the highlights of this country.

We had heard that it could be quite expensive to eat out in Japan unless you were willing to eat where the locals ate. Well we usually try to do this anyway in order to get the true flavour of a place, but in Japan we never really found anywhere where the locals didn't eat. We deliberately ate in a very wide variety of establishments in order to sample as much as we could of what Japan had to offer and overall, we found that eating out was actually quite cheap. The average price of our meals was just ¥3133 (about £16) for 2 people.

The cheapest meal we had cost just ¥900 (about £4.50). This was for a simple meal in Shinjuku at a stand up noodle bar (or “tachigui” which literally means: standing eating). To use these, you have to buy a ticket from an automat which you exchange at a counter for a bowl containing meat or seafood on a bed of noodles swimming in stock. Unfortunately, the buttons on the automat described the dishes in Japanese only. We decided to copy what somebody else had ordered even though we didn't really know what it was even after seeing it being served up. We also lived dangerously and pressed a random button.

We thought that these tickets fully specified the meal we were going to get so we were surprised when we were asked a question when we handed them over. When it was obvious that we didn't understand this question, we were shown two bowls with different types of noodles in which we had to choose between. We ended up with two very similar looking bowls each containing noodles swimming in stock with vegetables and something in batter on top. One of them was battered pork and the other was battered prawns. We ate these at a high bar which unusually (for a stand up noodle bar) actually had bar stools to sit on.

© Fukui Asahido The Japanese flair for presentation is demonstrated in this delicious looking Sushi platter.

The most expensive meal we had was in a very traditional looking restaurant in Kyoto and cost ¥8,820 (about £45). When we entered, we were enthusiastically greeted and, after taking our shoes off, we were shown to our table. These were all very low and some were in private booths but ours was part of a group arranged around the chefs area. Our waitress was dressed in a kimono and didn't really speak any English but this only made her more intent on explaining everything to us in Japanese. The menu was also in Japanese but, at the back, it contained some pictures of a set banquet meal which was what we were after and we just needed to point to it to order it.

The many dishes in this banquet were delivered to us one by one by our waitress and there seemed to be no end to them. Each time, she would kneel down beside us and describe the dish to us in significant detail - but always in Japanese so we could only guess at what we were being given! The dishes were mostly fish (both cooked and raw) as well as some grilled meat, mushrooms, tofu, vegetables and soup. We really enjoyed some of these dishes, and most of them were OK, but a few of them were disgusting including something that was like cold lard balls (we wondered whether it was whale blubber). We had this traditional meal at the start of our tour and it prepared us for the traditional meals we would have when we stayed in the ryokan later on in our tour.

We had previously tried one of the revolving sushi restaurants that Japan is famous for during our citybreak in Kuala Lumpur and we really loved it so we were keen to try these out in their home territory. The first one we saw was in the Shibuya district of Tokyo and it had a queue outside stretching right the way down the road. This place must have been good as it had a list of very strict rules on the door which were obviously intended to shift people in and out quickly (and obviously people weren't being put off by them). These rules included: no talking, no reading, minimum 5 dishes and maximum 30 minutes. We decided to look elsewhere!

We actually ate in two revolving sushi restaurants during our stay in Tokyo: one in Ginza and one in Asakusa (neither of which had any rules on the door!) The Japanese like to put some wasabi paste in their sushi. This is a fiery hot, green horseradish paste which neither of us like. This is generally used quite sparingly in sushi bars in other countries but in Japan it was quite noticeable as they obviously really like it. The restaurant in Ginza was particularly heavy with its wasabi and their sushi almost blew our heads off! The one in Asakusa applied it a little more sparingly and so we preferred this one. It seems such a strange substance to put on such delicately flavoured food.

Eating in most Japanese restaurants is relatively easy despite the language problem. This is because most restaurants either have plastic models of their dishes in their windows or at least photographs of them. The majority of the menus also have pictures in, so selecting a meal shouldn't yield any surprises and ordering it is simply a case of pointing. The only problem we had was asking if they had a non-smoking area. This would usually result in the production of an ash tray! Non-smoking sections were extremely rare in Japanese restaurants - except in the rare case where the whole restaurant was non-smoking (like the sushi bars). When you have finished your meal, you don't even need to ask for the bill as it will have been placed on your table before the food arrived. You just need to take it to the till by the door to pay it. Tipping is not expected and credit cards are often not accepted.

We really enjoyed walking around the food courts in the many large department stores around Japan as they were very keen to give out free samples (particularly in Tokyo). This is an excellent way to try out some weird things and we tried all sorts of food that we wouldn't have thought of buying and we discovered some delicious snacks (which we then purchased). We're sure that you could actually live off these free hand-outs if you wanted to. They certainly ruined our appetites on some days when we over-indulged in them.

Breakfast
Apart from our stay in the ryokan, breakfast was not included in any of the hotels that we stayed in. We did have breakfast in one of the other hotels but this was nothing special and was actually quite expensive. For the rest of our tour we bought all sorts of interesting cakes, sandwiches and snacks from the local 24 hour stores on our way back to the hotel at night to eat the following morning. One thing that was surprising was their sliced bread which was always sliced into extremely thick slices (about 1½ inches thick).

For more information on Japanese food visit Schauwecker's guide to Japanese dishes.