Forget 5-star restaurants and celebrity chefs — the best place in Japan to try Japanese food is in a department store

DepachikaFoodHarrison Jacobs/Business Insider

Japan, perhaps more than other destinations, is a place you travel with your taste buds. 

There are so many local specialties, from sushi and yakitori to okonomiyaki and shumai, that it'd be a shame to not try everything Japan's culinary tradition offers.

The best place to find and sample Japanese food in Japan is actually in Tokyo's department stores.

Stores like Tokyu, Mitsukoshi, and Nihonbashi Takashimaya are like miniature cities unto themselves, spanning five or more floors and selling everything you can possibly imagine. But it's in the basement where the real magic happens.

There you will find Japan's depachikas, sprawling fancy food halls with all kinds of Japanese and international cuisine.

Here's what it's like:

Depachika is a portmanteau of the words for department store (depato) and basement (chika). Most department stores in Japan have them. I visited the Tokyu Food Show, a depachika in the basement of Tokyu Toyoko Department Store that advertises itself as the "Theatre of Food."

Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider

 

 



The depachika is seen as a way to draw in hungry travelers and convince them to shop in the store's upper floors, otherwise known as the "the Fountain Effect." They offer just about every type of cuisine someone might want. Some depachika offer as many as 30,000 products.

TK Kurikawa/Shutterstock

Source: Wall Street Journal



I entered the depachika through what appeared to be a grocery store. There were all kinds of fresh product and packaged goods that looked perfectly ripe.

REUTERS/Toru Hanai


See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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