Family friendly foodie Japan

[LondonMummer]

We are headed to Japan and I’m starting to look for tips for great places to eat, particularly in Tokyo and Kyoto although we also have a spare evening in Hiroshima. We are travelling with our 13 and 14 year old DC's and looking for food that is authentic and casual rather than novelty, fusion or overly fancy. I'd also prefer not to queue for an hour and a half at an obscure teeny tiny Michelin starred ramen joint.

The kids are fussy so 8-course set meals are out, but yakitori, donburi, katsu, sushi and the like always work and we all really love great ramen.

We will of course plunder the joys of konbini, vending machines, train station bento and department store food courts but any tips would be massively appreciated as it all feels quite overwhelming.

@LondonMummer just adding this as another fantastic resource.

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowForum-g294232-i525-Japan.html

Thanks so much

I have been to Japan twice. Most places are easy and casual. Sushi bars and noodle bars at every turn. A lot of BBQ places too.

Hello op.

I lived in Japan for a while - a long time ago now though.

If it's still similar, there are bars called Izakaya that offer food.

They range from ordinary/cheapish to posher.

Even the cheap ones are quite nice with wells in tatami mat floors for the tables.

The menus are usually big, picture menus so you can just point at the items you want.
They'll have all the usual Japanese standard dishes/snacks like; edamame beans, yakitori.(chicken skewers) yakisoba noodles etc etc.

They'll have some nice (too easy to drink) mixed Japanese vodka drinks (shochu) and beer etc as well.

They are lively and relaxed you can try lots of dishes.

You may still be required to leave your shoes in a pigeon hole near the door and usually you just be in socks.

There are Izakaya everywhere, they are often high up in buildings, rather than ground floor.

There are chains of them as well.

In the posher ones the food is more refined (and odd, to me anyway) and you might get saki etc given to you as a complimentary drink.

In addition to those, Japanese restaurants tend to specialise in one food.

So you'll get ramen bars, oknomiyake places, ton katsu places, grill places - the name of which I can't remember where you grill thinly sliced meat etc at your table (oknomiyake also often have grills/hot plates at the table) etc etc.

They have loads of different types of food and a lot of places just do that type.

They usually have amazing realistic models of the type of food they offer in glass vases in front.

There are also more standard restaurants that do a bit of everything.

And if you get tired of trying Japanese food, Italian is very popular and there are loads of them around.

Two things I would say .....

1. Go high!

Often the nicest eateries are high up or top floor on buildings. You get a great view/atmosphere and theres more space than at ground level.

1. Chopsticks

Maybe it's changed but lots of places I went did not even have cutlery to offer you if you needed it.

You take your own cutlery or get your chopstick skills honed before you go

Eating with chopsticks does actually enhance the experience of a lot the food.

If you like Ramen, there should be lots of ramen places ... Sometimes you get Ramen Manga cafes; where they inexplicably combine eating ramen with reading paper manga magazines. Though Japanese people are such neat eaters of noodles etc that it works, I'd just leave a soaked through magazine.

https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/restaurants/best-izakaya-in-tokyo

This is specifically an English speaking oriented list

https://www.thetravel.com/best-izakayas-in-tokyo/

Lucky you! We went 5 or 6 years ago and loved Japan and the food was definitely a highlight.
One of our favourite places in Tokyo was just a local sushi bar near our hotel that used iPads for ordering. You could switch language and our DC could browse and hit order over and over.
We also visited one of the places where you eat in a little individual cabin and food was passed through a hole. Fun but the food wasn't the best.
We did a 'secret' food tour which was excellent and I would recommend.
We ate teppanyaki in the smart district high up in one of the newer buildings which was a great experience.
We also spent time hunting different flavour kit kats, the range is incredible and it was fun.

Sake, not saki (!)

Hi op, there's lots of family friendly places to eat in Japan, malls in particualr have great food courts with a huge variety of foods you can pick and choose from and are super family friendly, with some having English menues but also photos/fake foodso you can just point to what you would like. Food in general there is really tasty too, and many have converybelt sushi with English-optional electronic menus which is fun for kids.

I would scope out trip advisor revues of the areas you are staying in as there is such a huge wealth of places that can be spread out, so you don't want to waste time travelling around only to arrive and find out there's a huge line at certain times/no English/booking required etc.

Thank you so much for all your tips. We are so excited. Izakayas are great suggestion (I'm obsessed with the Tim Anderson cookery book about them) and totally love your suggestion for taking cutlery with us. Genius!

Thank you 🙏

And @Chewbecca and @YouJustDoYou thank you too. I definitely feel that wherever we eat we're going to be in seventh heaven. In fact dragging my kids away from convenience stores and food courts will be my biggest problem!