Dining in Japan

One of the frustrating things about dining in Japan is the dearth of information available in English on restaurants. Many restaurants simply cannot be found in English guidebooks or on the Interweb. When information is available, it's often cursory or of dubious editorial quality.

If you can read Japanese, the situation is entirely different. Entire genres of magazines are devoted solely to resturant writeups. These reviews regularly feature full-page photo spreads of the restaurant's specialties ("food porn"). While the independence of some of these reviews is a little questionable, the sheer volume of available information is undeniable.

Since we dine out fairly regularly, I figured that I could help do something about this lack of information. Over the past few weeks, I've been taking a notepad with me when eating out, jotting down notes on places and meals that we've eaten at. So, expect some additional restaurant-related content on patrick.com over the next few months.

My eventual goal is to spin off the reviews to a separate site, but one step at a time, I guess.