Chōyō (重陽）is the Japanese term for the Double Ninth Day which falls on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month. In Japan, September 9th is Chrysanthemum Day, one of the five seasonal festivals in Japan. To me, today is the most tranquil festival of all five, even compared with the rather quiet nanakusa day on January 7th.

If you are not ready to take the plunge and spend a day or more at a monastery, there are a couple places you can go to more casually enjoy this special meal in a temple environment. I think the whole experience becomes more than just the meal, such as you might get at a restaurant.

Tony McNicol at Tokyo Photojournalist takes you through the life of wagu which is better known around the world as Kobe beef. His photograph series tells a story that begins with an innocent looking calf on the peaceful pasture and finishes up with a tasty looking steak sizzling on the grill at a restaurant. Tony’s photo [...]

Back in the midst of the Norovirus scare that spread across the whole nation, we went ahead and planned an oyster dinner for some friends at home anyway. But during that winter of 2007 it appeared that raw oysters had simply disappeared completely from markets and restaurants because a health report from the government somewhat [...]

Funazushi at Kitashina In a series of recent posts, I summarized the very special food that is funazushi: where we had good funazushi and the history and traditions behind this special dish from Shiga. I’ll finally finish off this Shiga cuisine series for now. That is until our next trip to uncover more yummy places for [...]

We held the sixteenth in our series of Sake Meetups in and around Tokyo. Sometimes we do go for a kura visit nearby or in Tokyo. We've even had one Meetup in Niigata. We try to alternate between the somewhat seriously educational and the lighter fun version. This time was reggae plus nihonshu. What? Nihonshu? Not some other, greener intoxicant?