The best food I ate in Japan cost 78p from a corner shop

Nothing reminds you of your mortality like throwing your back out at an 800-year-old Japanese Buddhist temple.

But nothing helps you forget said mortality than eating chips sprinkled with seaweed that cost £1 from a supermarket straight after.

The brief for my four-night stay in Osaka, otherwise known as ‘Japan’s kitchen’, was simple: eat everything, even if my British self would assume it was bad.

I probably won’t, though. I eat my office lunches out of a bento box, I have kanji tattoos (I promise they don’t say ‘soup’) and I use a Japanese school bag for work.

In other words, I am obsessed with Japanese culture. I’m ready for it all.

The exchange of life

I fly from London Heathrow to Doha, Qatar, with Qatar Airways before landing at Kansai International, near Osaka, on a Sunday evening.

One jet-lagged sleep later, Yamada Yasuo, 59, takes me 50 miles away to Gokurakubashi, Kōyasan, in the Wakayama Prefecture.

‘Japanese food isn’t just for Japanese people, it’s for ...
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