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An izakaya is a typical drinking establishment in Japan, though they have always had more emphasis on food than the typical English or New Zealand pub. Like English pubs, and New Zealand cafes, some izakaya have recently started to modernize their menus, combining different styles and bringing foreign influence to traditional Japanese favorites to create new "modern Japanese" dishes. This is especially noticeable in competitive areas like Ginza, where izakaya have to differentiate themselves from the hundreds of other eating and drinking establishments in the area to attract customers.

Unlike Western pubs, much of the izakaya is private areas where you reserve a table, so more like what we would see as a restaurant, although many after-work groups use it as we would a pub. Some traditional izakaya have seats at the bar, where you interact with and are served by the owner, but more upmarket ones are strictly table service, with waiters and waitresses rushing about in response to bells at each table, making you imagine you are on an aeroplane.

Despite being in notoriously expensive Ginza at the heart of downtown Tokyo, a variety of dishes and several hours drinking at Tomoru came to approximately ¥6000 per head. As well as the crayfish salad, branded omelette and meaty morsels pictured, we also had several other mouth watering dishes washed down with wine and beer.

Okonomiyaki is native to the Osaka and Hiroshima areas of Japan. It is a pancake made with potato flour, and containing cabbage, and assorted other vegetables and meats, and in the Osaka variation, noodles. Once cooked, the pancake is topped with brown sauce, mayonnaise and bonito flakes or tiny flakes of nori (seaweed), which appear to dance as the heat rises around them. If you are a connoisseur of Korean pa-jeon and Vietnamese banh xeo, then okonomiyaki is a must try dish, along with takoyaki, small dough balls containing octopus that are often sold from carts on the street.

This Okonomiyaki Special was ¥900 from a small store near Hiroshima station. We had another in a quick lunch stop at Shin-Osaka for ¥650.

You can easily make okonomiyaki at home following this recipe or many like it. Often at restaurants, you will be given a bowl of raw mix, and cook it youself on a hotplate at the table. At other restaurants, you might sit at a counter in front of the chef as they cook in front of you, as common in many types of Japanese restaurants, and probably the closest you'll come to "teppanyaki" style cooking in Japan.

At every tourist attraction, people will get hungry, so there is always a restaurant somewhere, usually something quick and cheap, so families can get on with sightseeing and save their money for the gifts they need to take back to friends, family and workmates back home. Here at Yoshimi Hyakettsu (Yoshimi "100 caves"), there was a small family run restaurant which had run out of everything on this chilly spring day except hiyashi udon - cold udon noodles. Udon are a thick white noodle made from wheat flour. They are normally served in a hot soup, but in summer they can also be eaten cold with a soy based dipping sauce on the side. Here you see the noodles, sauce and wasabi, chilli and ginger to be optionally added to the sauce.

Udon are not the only noodles eaten cold. Zaru soba (buckwheat noodles on a bamboo mat) is another popular dish, as is hiyashi chuka (cold ramen noodles). Harusame (rice or bean vermicelli) is another noodle that is commonly eaten cold in Japan and elsewhere.

Fresh seafood is very big in Japan, and it doesn't get fresher than when you collect it yourself. These live clams were collected in Ise Bay by the uncle of the family I stayed with as an exchange student in 1989. We used them in miso soup and spaghetti vongole, it sure beats the canned or frozen variety you would get in most Italian restaurants here in the UK.

While I was staying with the family, and whenever I have visited since, uncle Jouji would often bring some fresh food over. He lives just out of town, and is retired so has plenty of time for gardening, fishing and gathering shellfish.

Japan is home to many restaurants specializing in one specific type of food. Shozankaku Matsuyama, on the top floor of the Isetan shopping centre above Kyoto Station, specialises in Yuba - a byproduct of the tofu manufacturing process sometimes called tofu skin. Every dish they serve contains yuba, and their menu is extensive. I opted for the Takenoko Zukushi (Bamboo shoot set menu) for ¥5000, while Chizu went for the plain Yuba Zukushi for ¥4500. Each set menu consisted of around 7 courses and a drink. We both started with yuba sashimi, slightly different variations but both with fresh cold yuba alongside the more conventional raw fish.

Often what the uninitiated think of when they imagine sushi, sashimi is raw fish, dipped in soy sauce and wasabi, and accompanied by ginger to clear the taste buds between bites. The fish has to be fresh, which is the main reason why it seldom tastes as good outside Japan.

Sashimi chef's will go to the fish market early in the morning to choose their fish for the day, in some towns, they may buy it straight off the boat as soon as it comes in. Being a good sashimi chef means expert knifework, as well as being at the fish market early and being able to spot the best fish.

This fish was prepared in my former host family's kitchen by my host brother, Ichiyo, who is now a chef in nearby Matsusaka, after working in Hawaii for a number of years. It was served on a bed of shredded daikon and shiso leaves, filled with slices of tuna in addition to its own meat.

There are many types of noodle in Japan. Fat, thin, white, yellow, brown, served in hot soup, with cold sauce or fried. Kishimen is a flat semi-transparent white noodle from Aichi, in this case served in a hot soup with mochi (rice cakes), fish balls and nori (seaweed). The restaurant was conveyer-belt style, only instead of a conveyer belt, there was a narrow moat with a continuous stream of bowls floating around with customers' orders on them.

Yakiniku literally means grilled meat. The best Yakiniku is found in Seoul, but if you're stuck this side of the Korea Strait, you can still get your red meat fix from an "viking" yakiniku restaurant like this one in Akihabara. Raw meat and vegetables are laid out smörgåsbord style and you take what you want back to your table to cook on the gas barbeque provided (maybe charcoal if you're lucky enough to find a genuine Korean style barbeque restaurant). Eat your fill of ロース (sirloin), カルビ (beef ribs), タン (ox tounge) レバー (liver) and other bovine organs wrapped in lettuce, with pumpkin, capsicum, side salads, rice, and something approximating kimchi within two hours for around ￥1000 each at lunchtime, and wash it down with a ￥800 not-quite-a-pint of beer while pondering where the restaurant makes its money. In the evenings and weekends, when the customers don't have to get back to work and can spend the full two hours stuffing themselves, expect to pay a lot more.

"All you can eat" is not the only option for yakiniku. Japanese beef restaurants range up to the ridiculously expensive, often serving Kobe or Matsusaka beef. Teppanyaki is a popular choice of Japanese cuisine outside of Japan largely due to the theatrics of the chefs, though they are hard to find within Japan, and when you do find one, you'll probably be cooking for yourself on an electric frypan (as opposed to a gas or charcoal grill of Korean style yakiniku) with no show off chefs in sight.