Japan: Tourist Entertainment Guide

With the Japanese love for good food (which is pretty universal, when you come to think of it!), it’s hardly surprising that finding a place to eat isn’t too difficult. Depending upon what you want to eat, and what is your budget, you have a fairly wide range of places to choose from- from the elegant restaurant where an elaborate kaiseki dinner is served with all the quiet and refined beauty of a traditional Japanese inn; to the roadside food stall where you down on a stool and enjoy food tossed, grilled and cooked right in front of your eyes.  

Nearly all the main Japanese cities have smart, high class restaurants, stand-alone and in hotels, where you can get very good albeit expensive meals; alongside are usually a whole range of eateries- sushi bars, grills locally known as 'robatayaki’, fast food joints and nabemono stalls. If you want to eat cheap but well, robatayakis and nabemono stalls are particularly recommended- they’re excellent value for money. Most do not have menus in English, but you can always point to what you want. If you’re going travelling, or on a picnic, another alternative is the delicious 'bento’, or packed lunches, which are available at most departmental stores. For the less adventurous, there are fast food joints and restaurants serving international cuisines- French, Chinese, Korean, Indian- you name it, and it’s there. 

Although the major cities in Japan do offer a whole range of very Western-style entertainment- nightclubs, bars, discotheques, amusement parks and recreation centres, karaoke lounges, cinemas and the extremely popular baseball games- it’s worthwhile going for some traditional Japanese forms of entertainment while you’re in the country. These can range from a serious and dignified tea ceremony in a tea house where rituals govern everything from the way the tea is made, to the comments made at the end of the ceremony; to a sumo wrestling match, where you can see one of Japan’s most interesting sports, with wrestlers weighing up to 350 lbs.

Also a part of typical Japanese entertainment is theatre- the best-known form abroad is probably Kabuki, a popular and vibrant form that combines song and dance with spectacle and is performed by men heavily made up as women. Two other forms of Japanese theatre are No -a sophisticated and rather highbrow form in which wooden masks are used and Bunraku puppet theatre.

Other than these, cultural performances- dance, music, modern drama- and sports, including golf, horse racing, baseball and water sports- are also possible alternative avenues for recreation.