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Japan: An overview of mouth watering gourmet blogs

Categories: East Asia, Japan, Arts & Culture, Food, Ideas

Japanese cuisine is rich in variety and it varies a great deal according to the season and the region, and trying out food at various restaurants, so called tabearuki (食べ歩き), is a hobby shared by many people in Japan.

Uploading pictures of the delicacies to be had at a special or exotic restaurant or even at a favorite noodle shop is also quite common.

Okonomiyaki, by Flickr id: Yohei Yamashita [1]

Okonomiyaki, by Flickr id: Yohei Yamashita

Takezou Miyamoto Niten is passionate about noodles and on his blog, he reviewed [2] 367 bowls of soba (蕎麦 wheat noodles), 80 of udon (うどん, white tick noodle), 193 of Chinese noodles (中華そばor ramen) and some sushi.

Handmade Udon, by Flickr id: Dr. Colossus [3]

Handmade Udon, by Flickr id: Dr. Colossus

Greenling, grunt, filefish, sand borer, saurel… a long list [4] of fishes posted by blogger wnk_sho who explains [5] [ja] the characteristics of each exemplar with illustrative pictures.

Sushi, by Flickr id: gbSk [6]

Sushi, by Flickr id: gbSk

Flickr user neco specializes in lunch boxes or bento in Japanese, usually composed of white rice with one or more side dishes. With the tag bento nikki [7](弁当日記, lunch boxes diary) dozens of yummy and colorful bentos are portrayed.

By Flickr id: neco [8]

By Flickr id: neco

Blogs where internet users exchange recipes of Japanese and foreign dishes are also numerous. Recipe blog [9] [ja], for example, is a community of bloggers who post detailed recipes of all kind of culinary experiments with pictures included.

In late November, on the same day the popular Michelin guide was released, another guide on Japanese food went on sale [10] [ja] for the first time. It is the printed version of tabelog.com [11][ja], a website entirely based on people`s recommendations and reviews of restaurants, both big and small, throughout the country from Okinawa to Hokkaido.

Japanese Sweets, by Flickr id: bebot [12]

Japanese Sweets, by Flickr id: bebot