Itinerary · for one

Osaka · Fukuoka · the kuidaore line

A one-way run down the Sanyo shinkansen in late autumn · the food line from Kansai to Kyushu · solo · ten nights. Three nights in Osaka for Kuromon market breakfasts, Dotonbori neon, kushikatsu in Shinsekai, and the standing-bar warren of Hozenji Yokocho. One night in Kobe for A5 wagyu on a teppan and a tour of the Nada sake breweries on the Rokko aquifer. Two nights in Takamatsu for the sanuki udon pilgrimage across Kagawa and a ferry day to Naoshima for Yayoi Kusama”s yellow pumpkin and the Chichu Art Museum. Two nights between Onomichi and Hiroshima for the Shimanami Kaido cycle bridge, Onomichi ramen with its flat-fish dashi, Hiroshima-yaki on a steel plate, and oysters at the Kanawa floating restaurant. Two nights in Fukuoka for the yatai stalls along the Nakasu canal — tonkotsu ramen at Ichiran”s mothership, motsunabe offal hotpot at Yamanaka, mentaiko at Fukuya, sushi at Aji no Tonbei. JR Pass 14-day covering every leg, oyster season open, the new sake just tapped.

1 traveler 5 bases 10 nights 11 min read

v1 · May 12, 2026

Nov 8 · Day 1 · the first one

Down at Kansai. Then eat till you drop.

Out of Hong Kong on a Monday, Osaka by lunch. The word here is kuidaore — ruin yourself on food. Ten nights down the Sanyo line in momiji season, when the maples flare red over the castle moats and the year''s new sake hits the breweries. Takoyaki at Wanaka, kushikatsu standing at Daruma in Shinsekai, A5 Kobe at a teppan in Sannomiya. A ferry to Naoshima for Kusama''s pumpkin. The udon pilgrimage across Kagawa — bukkake cold at Yamagoe, zaru at Yamada-ya, the noodles cut so square they ring on the bowl. Onomichi ramen with that small flat-fish dashi, the Shimanami Kaido cycled over the Seto Inland Sea, oysters at Kanawa floating on the Hiroshima river. Then the long pull south through the Kanmon tunnel into Kyushu — yatai stalls along Nakasu canal, tonkotsu broth boiled eighteen hours, motsunabe bubbling on a folding table.

Begin the journey ↓

Nov 8 → Nov 18 · 10 nights · 5 bases · 490 km between bases

Chapter 01 · Nov 8–10 Days 1–3

Osaka · kuidaore

Three nights in the kitchen of Japan. Octopus seared on a copper griddle, kushikatsu skewers double-dipping forbidden, the Glico runner blinking over the canal at midnight.

3 nights

Fly Hong Kong → Osaka Itami (ITM) or Kansai (KIX) · ~4 hr · taxi or Nankai Rapi:t to Namba

Base Namba/Shinsaibashi · walking distance to Dotonbori, Kuromon, Hozenji

Things to do

Kuromon market breakfast · sea urchin sashimi at Maguro-ya Kurogin, kobe skewers off a brazier
Takoyaki at Wanaka Sennichimae · the master flips them with a single chopstick, bonito flakes still moving
Kushikatsu at Daruma in Shinsekai · the 1929 original under the Tsutenkaku tower · no double-dipping the communal sauce
Okonomiyaki at Mizuno since 1945 · grilled in front of you on a steel teppan, mayonnaise lattice on top
Hozenji Yokocho after dark · moss-covered Fudo statue, the alley three metres wide, tachinomi standing bars in a row

Osaka eats early and late · most kushikatsu joints close 22:00, the late-night ramen counters in Namba run till 03:00 · cash still wins at the older stalls

Bookings

flight HKG → ITM or KIX · one-way · Day 1 pending

hotel Namba/Shinsaibashi · 3 nights · walkable to Dotonbori pending

activity Kuromon market food tour · optional morning slot Day 2 pending

Chapter 01 · the story

Dotonbori at midnight is the Glico runner blinking blue and red over a canal full of his own reflection, while a man behind a copper griddle turns forty balls of octopus with a single chopstick and never looks down. Osaka is the city that eats itself awake.

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The word kuidaore gets translated as “eat till you drop” but the real meaning is closer to “ruin yourself with food” — and Osaka has been doing it on purpose since the 1600s, when the merchants of the shogunate decided that what Kyoto did with temples and Edo did with politics, they would do with rice and barrels and the dashi pot. The city was the kitchen of Japan before it was anything else.

You start at Kuromon at 8am when the market is opening and the sea urchin is fresh in its purple shell and the vendor will scoop it into a small wooden cup for you to eat standing up. By lunch you are at Wanaka Sennichimae watching the master turn the takoyaki with the long chopstick — the trick is that the batter goes in liquid, the octopus chunks drop in once, and from there it is wrist and timing, the half-spheres rotating ninety degrees every fifteen seconds until they round out into perfect golden balls. Bonito flakes go on top still moving in the heat.

By evening you are under the Tsutenkaku tower in Shinsekai at Daruma, the 1929 original, where the kushikatsu skewers come breaded and fried and the communal sauce bowl sits in the middle of the bar with a sign that says no double-dipping. You dip once. You eat. You dip the cabbage if you need more sauce. That is the rule and it is not negotiable.

What stays is the alley. Hozenji Yokocho is three metres wide and lit by paper lanterns and built around a moss-covered Fudo statue that you splash with water for luck, and the tachinomi standing bars sell you a glass of shochu for 500 yen with a small dish of pickled radish thrown in. The Glico sign is one block north, blinking. The canal water is dark. The city is still open.

Chapter 02 · Nov 11 Day 4

Kobe · A5 and the Nada breweries

One night between the mountains and the sea. A5 marbled like lace on a teppan, the cube of fat browning first, garlic chips going dark in the corner.

1 night

Train Osaka → Sannomiya · JR special rapid · ~22 min

Base Sannomiya · walkable to the steak counters and one stop from Nada's breweries

Things to do

A5 Kobe at Wakkoqu or Steak Land Kobe-kan · sirloin, fillet, the fat cap rendered first, garlic chips, the chef wiping the plate between cuts
Nada sake district · Hakutsuru, Sawanotsuru, Kiku-Masamune · the Rokko aquifer, the largest sake-making area in Japan
Kitano Ijinkan-gai · the foreign settlement on the hill · gingerbread Victorian houses left by Meiji-era traders
Sobameshi at a Nagata backstreet joint · chopped soba and rice fried together on a hot plate · Kobe's working-class lunch
Meriken Park at sunset · the red Port Tower, the harbour lights going on one by one

Most Nada breweries open 10:00–16:00 and close one weekday — check the day · Kobe steak counters take same-day walk-ins for the bar seats but the table reservations book a week out

Bookings

train Osaka → Sannomiya · JR · covered by JR Pass pending

hotel Sannomiya · 1 night · near the steak counters pending

activity Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum tasting · afternoon slot pending

Chapter 02 · the story

A5 is not a marketing letter — it is the top of a grading scale written down in 1988, where the A is yield and the 5 is marbling at BMS 8 to 12, fat woven through the muscle like lace. The chef puts one slice on the teppan and the room goes quiet.

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Kobe beef is Tajima-gyu, a strain of black-haired Japanese cattle raised in Hyogo prefecture under a registry that goes back to 1983. The grade is two letters and a number. The A is yield — how much sellable meat comes off the carcass, A being the top of three. The number is quality, scored across marbling, colour, firmness, and fat. Marbling, in turn, is scored on the BMS — Beef Marbling Standard, twelve levels, where 1 is a clean red steak and 12 is mostly white. Kobe-certified A5 sits at BMS 8 or higher. There are about three thousand head certified each year. You are eating a named cow.

At Wakkoqu the chef cooks at the counter on a polished teppan, six diners arranged around the steel. He starts with the fat cap — a small cube of suet cut from the same animal — and renders it down to glaze the surface. Then the garlic chips go on, sliced thin, and brown to a dark amber while a sirloin slab waits on the chopping block. The cut is portioned at 120 grams. He sears each face for maybe forty seconds and rests it on a warm stone. The first bite goes onto wasabi salt, not sauce. The fat melts at body temperature. That is the technical claim and it turns out to be true.

The afternoon belongs to Nada. The district has been brewing sake since the Edo period — the Rokko mountains feed the miyamizu aquifer, mineral water hard enough to fast-track the koji fermentation, and the warehouses still cluster along the old shipping canal. Hakutsuru runs a free museum with a kura tasting at the end. Sawanotsuru’s brewery sits ten minutes down the road. Kiku-Masamune’s cedar-aged kimoto style is what the locals drink with their A5.

You finish on Meriken Park as the harbour lights come up, the red Port Tower throwing a reflection on the water, the day folding itself into one small, expensive envelope.

Chapter 03 · Nov 12–13 Days 5–6

Takamatsu · sanuki udon and Naoshima

Two nights on Shikoku. Cold bukkake at a roadside counter, the noodles square-cut and ringing on the bowl, a yellow polka-dot pumpkin at the end of a concrete pier.

2 nights

Train Sannomiya → Okayama → Takamatsu · Marine Liner over the Seto Ohashi bridge · ~2 hr 10

Ferry Takamatsu ↔ Naoshima · Shikoku Kisen · ~50 min · day return

Things to do

Sanuki udon pilgrimage · Yamagoe Udon for cold bukkake with a raw egg, Wara-ya at Yashima under the thatched roof, Yamada-ya for zaru
Naoshima day · ferry from Takamatsu · Yayoi Kusama's yellow pumpkin at the pier, Chichu Art Museum buried in the hillside by Tadao Ando, James Turrell's Open Field
Ritsurin Garden · one of Japan's three great strolling gardens · pine bonsai trained over three centuries, a tea house on the koi pond
Honetsuki-dori at Ikkaku · bone-in chicken leg charred outside, juices running, garlic and pepper · the Marugame specialty
Cin.na.mon on Naoshima for lunch · curry on the porch · the cats come over for scraps

Naoshima museums close Monday and require timed entry · Chichu sells out — book a week ahead · the udon shops in Kagawa open 06:00 and shut by 14:00 once the dough runs out

Bookings

train Sannomiya → Okayama → Takamatsu · Marine Liner · JR Pass pending

hotel Takamatsu central · 2 nights · walk to the ferry pier pending

activity Chichu Art Museum · timed entry · Day 6 pending

Book exactly seven days ahead at 10:00 JST

Chapter 03 · the story

Ritsurin is an A-rank kaiyū-shiki, a stroll-around garden designed so the view rearranges itself every twenty paces — pines trained for three centuries, six ponds, the borrowed silhouette of Mount Shiun behind. The Michelin guide gives it three stars.

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Sanuki udon is square in cross-section, cut by hand from a dough so firm the makers used to tread it under foot, and Kagawa prefecture eats more of it per capita than anywhere else in Japan. The pilgrimage circuit involves a rental car, a stack of 100-yen coins, and a willingness to stand at a counter at 7am while a man in a white apron weighs your portion on a scale. At Yamagoe Udon the order is kamatama — hot noodles, raw egg, a splash of soy — eaten standing in the courtyard from a plastic bowl. The noodles ring against the bowl when you stir them. They are still warm from the pot.

Ritsurin sits inside the city, a fifteen-minute walk from the station, and it is older than most things in Japan that call themselves old — laid out by the Matsudaira clan starting in 1625 and worked on continuously for the next hundred years. The classification is kaiyū-shiki, “many-pleasure stroll garden” — the path circles six ponds and thirteen scenic hills, the views designed to compose themselves new at every bend. Mount Shiun rises behind the south pond as shakkei, borrowed scenery, brought inside the frame. The pine bonsai near the central pond have been trained for three centuries — bent down, propped up on stakes, clipped every year — and one of them has a name carved on a small stone tablet beside it.

The ferry to Naoshima leaves from the pier next to the JR station, takes fifty minutes, and lands you next to Yayoi Kusama’s yellow polka-dot pumpkin at the end of a concrete dock. The Chichu Art Museum is buried in the hillside by Tadao Ando — concrete corridors that open onto skylit chambers where five Monet Water Lilies hang under a roof that admits only the day. James Turrell’s Open Field is across the way, a square of light you walk into.

You come back on the last ferry with the sun behind Shōdoshima. Dinner is bone-in chicken leg at Ikkaku, charred outside, garlic and pepper, juice on the paper bib.

Chapter 04 · Nov 14–15 Days 7–8

Onomichi · the Shimanami bridges

Two nights on the Seto Inland Sea. Chicken-stock ramen with a slick of pork back-fat and small flat-fish dashi, a cycle path across six islands, oysters cracked open over coals on a houseboat.

2 nights

Train Takamatsu → Okayama → Shin-Onomichi · ~1 hr 50

Side trip Hiroshima 40 min west · Saijō sake breweries 30 min east

Things to do

Onomichi ramen at Ichibankan or Akaisei · chicken-and-pork broth thinned with small flat-fish dashi, a slick of back-fat lard floating on top
Shimanami Kaido cycle · 60 km of suspension bridges hopping six islands · rent at the Onomichi end, drop at Imabari, ferry the bike back
Hiroshima-yaki at Hassho or Reichan · the noodle-and-cabbage version, layered on the teppan in front of you, oyster instead of pork if you ask
Kanawa floating restaurant on the Hiroshima river · oyster kaiseki in a moored houseboat, the season just opened
Saijō sake town · Kamotsuru where Obama drank, Hakubotan, Kamoki · seven breweries within ten minutes of the JR station

Shimanami bikes book out in autumn · reserve at Giant Onomichi a week ahead · oyster season opens late October but Kanawa wants a phone reservation in Japanese — concierge it · the Saijō Sake Matsuri is the second weekend of October, so we're after the crowd but the new sake is still on the boards

Bookings

train Takamatsu → Shin-Onomichi · JR Pass pending

hotel Onomichi waterfront · 2 nights · near the cycle terminal pending

rental Giant Onomichi · cross-bike one-way to Imabari pending

One-way drop fee · book a week ahead in autumn

Chapter 04 · the story

Onomichi is a hillside town the cats inherited — narrow stone staircases, twenty-five temples on a single pilgrim trail, ginger toms asleep on warm doorsteps in the afternoon. From the harbour you can see three of the Shimanami suspension bridges.

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The town sits on a slope between the railway and the sea. The main streets run along the waterfront flat, but everything interesting goes vertical — stone stairs cut into the hillside, a temple every two switchbacks, the rooflines stepping up the slope in tiers. The Neko no Hosomichi, the cat-narrow-path, is a marked walking route that threads through the residential lanes between Senkō-ji and Tennei-ji, and it is genuinely full of cats. Local volunteers feed them. Local artists paint round stone cat-faces and tuck them in doorways. You count thirty in an hour and stop counting.

The temple pilgrimage is older. Twenty-five temples, the Onomichi Furumichi, walked in a numbered circuit since the Edo period — Senkō-ji at the top of the cable car, Saikoku-ji halfway down with its enormous straw sandal hung at the gate, Jōdo-ji preserving a Muromachi-period tea pavilion. The pilgrim trail stitches the town together vertically; you climb, you ring a bell, you descend a different staircase, and at every landing the Seto Inland Sea opens out below with another bridge in the distance.

The next morning the bikes come out. The Shimanami Kaido is sixty kilometres of suspension and cable-stayed bridges connecting six islands between Honshu and Shikoku, and the design — separate cyclist lanes on every span, blue line painted on the road, hardly any cars — is the reason it gets called the best cycle route in Asia. You leave Onomichi by ferry to Mukaishima, climb the long ramp to the Innoshima bridge, drop into a citrus grove on the far side. By lunch you are eating Hokkaido salt-water ice cream at Dolce on Ikuchijima. By dusk Imabari, the bike dropped at the Giant, the bus back to Onomichi at sunset.

What stays is the ramen. Onomichi-style is chicken-and-pork broth thinned with seto-uchi small-flat-fish dashi, a slick of pork back-fat lard floating on top, the noodles flat and slightly chewy. You eat it back at Ichibankan at 10pm.

Chapter 05 · Nov 16–17 Days 9–10

Fukuoka · tonkotsu and the yatai

Two nights at the end of the Sanyo line. A paper-lantern stall on the Nakasu canal, tonkotsu broth so thick the chopsticks stand up in it, motsunabe bubbling on a folding table.

2 nights

Train Shin-Onomichi → Hakata · Sanyo + Kyushu shinkansen · ~1 hr 40

Out Fukuoka airport · subway from Hakata · ~10 min · evening flight home

Things to do

Yatai stalls along the Nakasu canal · Genchan, Daichan, Naka-chan · folding stools, paper lanterns, tonkotsu and yakitori and oden under the same awning
Hakata tonkotsu at the mothership · Ichiran where the chain was born, Ippudo's flagship at Daimyo, Shin Shin in Tenjin · broth boiled eighteen hours
Motsunabe at Yamanaka or Rakutenchi · pork-and-beef offal hotpot in a soy-and-garlic broth, cabbage stacked over the top, chanpon noodles dropped in at the end
Mentaiko at Fukuya's Nakasu outlet · spicy pollack roe by the slab · on toast with butter, on rice, on anything
Aji no Tonbei sushi counter · Genkai-nada sea bream and saba, the wasabi grated to order

Yatai stalls open ~18:00 and close ~02:00 · most shut Sunday and bad weather · cash only · the popular ones cap at eight stools so go early or queue · Hakata station has Kyushu shinkansen connections to Kumamoto and Nagasaki if a day extension tempts

Bookings

train Shin-Onomichi → Hakata · Sanyo + Kyushu shinkansen · JR Pass pending

hotel Hakata or Tenjin · 2 nights · walk to the Nakasu yatai pending

flight Fukuoka (FUK) → HKG · evening departure Day 11 pending

Chapter 05 · the story

The Hakata yatai is the last working night-market in Japan — eighteen-foot pushcart, eight folding stools, a paper lantern, a cook running a tonkotsu pot and a yakitori grill from the same twelve square feet of wood. Fukuoka protects them by law.

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Yatai are mobile food stalls, wheeled out at dusk and packed away before dawn, and Fukuoka is the last Japanese city that still has them at scale. There used to be thousands across the country in the postwar years; most cities banned them by the 1970s for sanitation. Fukuoka kept theirs. In 2013 the municipal government wrote them into a yatai ordinance — caps the licences at around a hundred, sets cleaning standards, allows new operators in by lottery. The stalls cluster along the Nakasu canal and around Tenjin, light up at six, close at two. You sit on a folding stool with your knees under a wooden ledge and the canal water moving black behind the canvas.

Hakata tonkotsu is the broth the city sent out into the world — pork bones boiled at a rolling temperature for eighteen hours until the marrow emulsifies and the liquid turns the colour of skim milk, served over thin straight noodles you can order at five firmnesses from yawa (soft) to barikata (very hard). Ichiran was born here. Ippudo too. At the mothership counters the noodles arrive in a minute, the broth at a near-boil, and you finish the bowl in seven. The kaedama re-order — a second portion of noodles dropped into your remaining broth — is its own ritual, called out across the counter as you slurp.

The second night belongs to motsunabe. Pork-and-beef offal hotpot, a Hakata invention from the early postwar years, served at folding tables with a gas burner in the middle. The broth is soy and garlic, the cabbage stacked half a metre high, the offal coming in at the bottom. You let it boil. The cabbage collapses. Champon noodles drop in at the end and soak up what’s left.

You finish at a yatai. Yakitori. Cold beer. The lantern light on the canal. The flight is at nine.

Nov 18 · Day 11 · the last one

Last bowl on the Nakasu. Then the flight home.

A final yatai dinner under a paper lantern on the canal — tonkotsu so thick the chopsticks stand up in it, a tumbler of shochu on the rocks, the master ladling broth without looking. Hakata station by morning, Fukuoka airport ten minutes by subway, Hong Kong by dinner. Ten nights and maybe forty meals behind, the dashi still on the cuffs of the shirt, the taste of mentaiko on toast half-remembered already.

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