It snowed in Tokyo on March 22 – a wet, rain-like snow that puddled as soon as it touched the ground, but snow nonetheless. It was un-springlike as the week before was sunny. Early spring is sly and tricky here. One moment the kawazu-zakura have blanketed trees in pink popcorn blooms, the next moment it’s cloudy skies and planning hotpot dinners all over again. But it is glorious when temperatures aren’t whipsawing wildly from hot to freezing, when spring finally deigns to show up in the form of balmy, blue-skied days and flowers blooming everywhere. Spring days like this are beautiful for cycling in Tokyo. Fresh air, warm sun and, best of all, no freezing fingers and ears when you’re on a bike.

For a city of its size and density, Tokyo is disproportionately lacking in great sandwiches. Let us be clear: We’re not talking about ethereal Japanese-style sando, with their soft white bread and fillings like omelet, strawberries and cream or even ridiculously expensive wagyu fillets (although those are a perfectly valid and wonderful form of sandwich). We’re thinking of hearty sandwiches that power you through endless Zoom meetings: baguettes, toasties, wraps, banh mi. Fortunately, there’s the Chipper’s pop-up at BathHaus, where Kohsuke “Chan” Yamaoka turns out simple, well-made sandwiches every Tuesday evening.

It’s not every day you see someone’s face peeking out of the belly of a bright blue skipjack bonito (katsuo). You certainly don’t expect them to wear fish-shaped headgear while wrapping dozens of sushi rolls all morning. But this was how Mai Nagamatsu, katsuobushi evangelist and proprietor of breakfast diner Katsuo Shokudo, greeted us on February 3: her head looking like a fish at sea. It was Setsubun, the first day of spring according to the old Japanese lunar calendar, itself based on the traditional Chinese calendar that divides a year into 24 solar terms. (These days, the lunar calendar is more a reminder of cultural practices and traditional markers of seasonal changes than a practical way to keep time.)

Take a rich chicken bone stock and toss in a handful of whole ground spices and herbs. Add a whole chicken leg, braised until the meat is almost sliding off the bone. Slip in a bouquet of cooked vegetables – the bare minimum being carrot, broccoli, bell peppers, eggplant and potato – and serve alongside rice. This is a classic Hokkaido soup curry, a spicy, vibrant soup-and-rice dish guaranteed to warm even the cold, dead bodies of your enemies. But this isn’t its final form. Like the Choose Your Own Adventure books of the 1980s, you can customize almost every aspect of your bowl.

It’s noon on the first day of 2022 in Tokyo’s historic Asakusa neighborhood and we find ourselves in Hinatomaru, a casual standing sushi bar. There are few better places to eavesdrop on conversations than in small bars like this one. Outside, thousands of people bundled in winter coats and kimonos throng the main approach to Sensoji, Tokyo’s oldest Buddhist temple. Shepherded by police into a queue spilling out onto the road in front of Kaminarimon Gate, which has been closed off to cars today, they’re here for hatsumōde, the first shrine or temple visit of the new year. We decided to forgo the crowded shrine for our own venerable tradition of hatsuzushi: the first sushi of the year.

We woke one Sunday craving omuraisu, our favorite Japanese comfort food. Omuraisu, sometimes rendered as omurice, is an umami bomb: a soft egg omelet arranged over rice studded with a protein such as chicken or pork and a flourish of ketchup-laced demi-glace sauce over the top. So we headed to Edoya, a yoshoku outpost in central Tokyo that opened over 60 years ago and became popular thanks to a particularly affable chef. Although it means “Western food,” yoshoku is a decidedly Japanese creation, one inspired by a 19th-century notion of pan-European cuisine. Developed with the support of the Meiji Emperor around 1900, this style of cooking places a great emphasis on meats, often paired with rich demi-glace sauces, which many believed would help Japanese people become larger in build.

Sweet, fluffy and incredibly habit forming, yakiimo (roasted sweet potatoes) are an autumnal treat loved throughout Japan. But in a small corner of Setagaya, Tokyo’s largest ward, a dedicated shop bakes them year-round. Kept busy by a steady stream of visitors, all clutching tell-tale paper bags, Fuji has a national take on a traditional snack. The slow-baked yakiimo are often sold from slow-moving mini trucks equipped with onboard wood-burning ovens. As the trucks roll by, they fill the air with both a comforting smell and familiar song. Roasted on a bed of stones, the potatoes are commonly known as ishiyaki imo and once saved Japan from famine when rice crops failed in the 18th century. Served without butter or salt, it may seem a little simple to the untrained eye, but cooked right, the flavor and texture render any additions entirely obsolete.

If it weren’t for the dozens of brightly lit signs and paper lanterns promising libations of every sort, you might mistake the two narrow alleys alongside the train tracks on the northeast side of Shibuya station for a derelict apartment block. In reality Nonbei Yokocho (AKA Drunkard’s Alley) is one of Tokyo’s few remaining yokocho (side street) bar districts. Like the much larger and better-known Golden Gai in Shinjuku, Nonbei Yokocho is a collection of aging and tightly packed microbars. Each watering hole is scarcely more than a few square meters, and if longtime regulars aren’t taking up the scant floor space, newcomers may try any number of doors before they find an empty seat.

In the West, tofu is considered a boring dish desperately in need of other ingredients to make it interesting. Not so in Japan and especially in Kyoto. Tofu is a well-known component of Kyoto regional cooking, and locals consider tofu to be the star of the show. When visiting Kyoto during November and December’s peak leaf-viewing season we always make sure to book a meal at one of the city’s wonderful selection of tofu-centric eateries. Our very favorite is Tousuiro, a Kyoto institution where the tofu is made in house from domestically grown soybeans. At Tousuiro, tofu turns into a dazzling spectacle. The meal is not only delicious: It is the perfect Kyoto experience.

Japanese trains have garnered worldwide admiration and praise for their punctuality, efficiency and cleanliness. The country’s railway network is supported by a strong surrounding infrastructure, and some stations have become tourist spots in themselves. And whereas eating at a train station might be a last resort in other countries, in Japan, you might find yourself at a gourmet destination. In 2005, JR East, the largest of the Japan Railways corporations, began to push the concept of ekinaka – literally “inside station” – as a way to expand their business in the face of a declining and ageing population. Previously, stations might have had small kiosks selling magazines and snacks inside the ticket gates, and perhaps a standing soba noodle shop, cheap bowls purchased by a ticket vending machine at the door.

How thrilling to know it’s possible to reach far back into Japan’s gastronomic past merely by visiting Azabu Juban’s Sarashina Horii Soba for a bit of “living history” in the form of a pleasantly simple meal. The Sarashina cooking lineage stretches back over 200 years and is always evident in the shimmering, high-quality plates of buckwheat noodles coming from the kitchen. In 1798, Nunoya Tahei, a Mastumoto City textile merchant famous for his soba skills, founded the Sarashina soba lineage when he was encouraged by Hosina, the local feudal lord, to open a shop making a style of soba popular in the Japanese Alps area of Nagano.

Many people think of miso as the soup that gets tacked onto every Japanese meal. We can still remember our first experience of Japanese food in the West, when the waiter brought the soup at the end of the meal, and someone thought he’d forgotten to serve it at the beginning. Any self-respecting Japanese meal, just about anywhere in the world, will end with miso soup. The miso used in the soup is a paste that will determine the flavor of the soup. There are basically three kinds of miso: red (akamiso), white (shiromiso) and mixed (awase), which has a brownish hue and is the most common variety used in miso soup.

Sweet, fluffy and incredibly habit forming, yakiimo (roasted sweet potatoes) are an autumnal treat loved throughout Japan. But in a small corner of Setagaya, Tokyo’s largest ward, a dedicated shop bakes them year-round. Kept busy by a steady stream of visitors, all clutching tell-tale paper bags, Fuji has a national take on a traditional snack. The slow-baked yakiimo are often sold from slow-moving mini trucks equipped with onboard wood-burning ovens. As the trucks roll by, they fill the air with both a comforting smell and familiar song. Roasted on a bed of stones, the potatoes are commonly known as ishiyaki imo and once saved Japan from famine when rice crops failed in the 18th century. Served without butter or salt, it may seem a little simple to the untrained eye, but cooked right, the flavor and texture render any additions entirely obsolete.

On the forested Mt. Oyama, only one and a half hours away from Tokyo, the sleepy atmosphere is broken by a cheering crowd. It’s mid-March and women are sitting in a row on a stage, shoveling cups of tofu into their mouths as fast as they can. It is messy, distinctly inelegant and a whole lot of mad fun. These women are challengers in the Wanko Tofu speed eating competition, which also sees men and children compete in respective rounds. All this, along with a gigantic four-meter pot of boiling tofu and several other street food snacks, is part of the annual Oyama Tofu Festival, which celebrates the area’s long history of producing especially delicious tofu and marks its 30th anniversary this year.

In 2015, a ramen store in Tokyo made waves by becoming the first ever to receive a Michelin star. Tucked down a street in a slightly shabby area near Sugamo Station to Tokyo’s north, the store, Tsuta, was flooded with hordes of noodle worshippers and subsequently issued a timed-entry ticketing system to manage the crowds (reportedly to spare the clientele of the love hotel across the street from embarrassment). Locals maintain, however, that the best ramen in the area is not found at Tsuta, which has since moved to a more upmarket location, but rather at Menya Imamura, housed one street over from the original Tsuta store.