The first thing I asked our Japanese guide was where locals go to forage for food in Kyoto. I always like to head straight to the markets and food enclaves when I arrive in a new city; it’s the pulse of how people live and how the food culture is surviving the perils of supermarkets and industrial food. Read More >

The Tenjinbashisuji Shopping Street in Osaka is purportedly the longest arcade in Japan, a 2.6km-long shopping narrow mall starting at Tenjinbashi, reaching Tenjinbashisuji 7 chome to the north taking about 40 minutes to walk its length. It took us all morning! Read More >

Born in London, raised in Australia and educated in Tokyo and Paris, Ned Goodwin is the archetypical ‘Wandering’ sommelier; an intrepid wine obsessed sommelier that has worked at acclaimed wine institutions such Veritas restaurant, New York, Les Juveniles in Paris, Michael’s in Los Angeles, and is currently the wine curator for Luke Mangan’s Salt & World Wine Bar in Tokyo, among many other projects with a CV that makes us other sommelier/consultants look lazy. But most relevant of all, above and beyond all the formal qualifications one can seek as a sommelier, Goodwin passed his Master of Wine exam in 2010 and now a wine Jedi in the realms of Obi-Wan. Read More >