Japanese food, with pictures

So marina asked about Japanese food recently, and qian posted not one, but two epic posts of Japanese food, and I thought…I could do that too! 

I used to have many, many more food photos, but I lost about 6000 photos the day after I got back from Japan in 2008, and I've been much less photo-happy on this trip & haven't been eating out as much, so I don't actually have that many. But! I am dragging showing around some friends next month, and we are going to go to many great restaurants including a place that serves "punk" kaiseki cuisine, so there will certainly be a follow-up to this post anon.

I should explain that I have several guiding principles for eating in Japan. One: I tend to prefer Japanese or Japanese-style cuisine rather than futilely seeking pizza or Mexican food, particularly this time since I'm only here (*sob*) for 2.5 months. (That said, I enjoy Japanese pizza quite a lot. In fact, I've had some amazing Italian food in Japan.) Two: whenever you can, eat the local specialty (often called meibutsu); eat local in general. Three: whenever there's anything that says "limited time only" (gentei kikan), get that. Four: I refuse to eat whale (or dolphin), but everything else is on the table, literally and metaphorically.

All these things being said, a preponderance of these photos are from cafes. YUM. ( Twenty-one photos of food, mostly from Kansai and various cafes. )

On second thought, maybe I won't go out tomorrow either

The outlying rain bands yesterday and earlier today were bad enough, but Typhoon Ma-on means business.