Every town has a story.
Each story starts with a food Japan does #1 in the whole country — and follows it home to the small town that grows it. Read one, and see if it makes you want to book a trip.
Moka
The country’s best strawberries, straight off the vine — an easy day trip from Tokyo. Greenhouses warm with winter sun, a farmer who hands you the reddest one first, and a town that has never once been in a guidebook.
Katsunuma
Pick-your-own Shine Muscat, a vineyard lunch, and a hot spring over the whole valley. Japan’s oldest wine country, still small enough to walk — and generous enough to send you home heavier than you came.
Chiran
A peaceful tea town at the southern tip of Japan, where even the free cup at an ordinary diner is extraordinary. Samurai gardens, rows of tea to the horizon, and nobody in a hurry — including you.
Yonezawa
The storied wagyu an English teacher carried out to the world in the 1870s — heifer-only, low-melting, best as sukiyaki — in a castle town a president admired, in Japan’s most ramen-obsessed region.
Where should I go next?
Every number-one food in Japan leads somewhere. See the running map of where it’s #1 — and find the town waiting for your next trip.
See where it’s #1 →