Recipe books collected from around the globe, some written in Cyrillic and Arabic, line the bookshelf of Yuriko Aoki, a cooking expert on the world's local dishes.
She refers to the books, including an instructional tome with hand-drawn illustrations and a beautiful volume resembling a photo album, to recreate local flavors and introduces them through events and the media.
Shoppers preparing for the New Year have been crowding a food market in Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto.
There are about 130 stores in the 400-meter-long shopping street of the Nishiki market, which has been known as "the kitchen of Kyoto" since the Edo period.
Canned mackerel developed by high school students in central Japan has been officially certified as space food by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.
Wakasa Senior High School in Fukui Prefecture has been studying the development of space food for 12 years. JAXA recently added the canned mackerel to its list of 33 items of Japanese space food.
Thursday marks a week since Tokyo's new wholesale food market opened at Toyosu. The new market was initially beset by traffic jams, but wholesalers and buyers are gradually learning how to get around.
The Tokyo metropolitan government has arranged for personnel to guide traffic. It also plans to open a road section between Toyosu and Tsukiji on a temporary basis early next month to help ease congestion.
People are getting a taste of Hokkaido cuisine at an annual food festival in the city of Sapporo.
The Sapporo Autumn Fest began on Saturday, 8 days later than scheduled. The delay was caused by a powerful earthquake that hit the northern prefecture last week.
The owner of a food shop selling popular local cuisine in Osaka, western Japan, has been accused of evading more than one million dollars in income tax.
The Osaka Regional Taxation Bureau has filed a complaint with local prosecutors that Tatsuko Miyamoto, has been hiding roughly 330 million yen, or about 3 million dollars, in income.
Evacuees in rain-hit areas of western Japan are being urged to take precautions for heatstroke and food poisoning, as the hot weather is expected to continue.
The Meteorological Agency says temperatures are expected to rise above 30 degrees Celsius in many parts of the country on Wednesday.
Torrential rain in western Japan is causing delays in transportation services and supply of food.
Staff at a supermarket in Okayama City say they are running short of various items, including seafood and bread.
Weisshorn, a restaurant facing the peak of Mount Asama that sits among a green mountain range, is located on the top floor of the 297-bed Maruko Central Hospital in Ueda, Nagano Prefecture.
The restaurant, which is also open to the public, offers well-balanced lunches. On the day this reporter visited, the main dish was white fish with a tomato-based sauce. Meals for the hospital staff and those who come for the "ningen dokku," a complete medical checkup, are also made in the same kitchen. The dishes are prepared by the 52-year-old chef, Koji Yamada.
Chojiya is a restaurant specializing in "tororo" (grated yam) dishes located in Shizuoka city's Suruga Ward, an area that retains the feel of Mariko-juku, one of the many stations of the old Tokaido route.
The establishment replaced its symbolic thatched roof this spring and continues to attract many visitors from Japan and abroad, yet Kaoru Shibayama, the 64-year-old proprietor, says, "Our business had hit rock bottom at one point."
French chef Fumio Yonezawa has been serving as a volunteer once a month at the Ronald McDonald House Setagaya in Tokyo where his cooking helps lift the spirits of those who stay here.
The house, which is run by a public-interest incorporated foundation, is a facility for families and their children, who need to stay in or visit hospitals located far from home to receive advanced medical care. Some NPOs and other organizations have set up these type of accommodations near the hospitals to relieve the burden on young patients and their families.
The soul food of Shizuoka, where Yoshiaki Takei hails from, is "oden," a hotpot consisting of various ingredients in blackish broth.
As a child, Takei would return home from school, grab some change and head to an oden shop. When he slid the door open, he would see an oden pot simmering on the sunken hearth.
Japanese astronauts craving for a taste of home can now tuck into ramen and rice balls on the International Space Station (ISS), but that's just an appetizer.
Food firms are now chomping at the bit for the chance to tout their chow as food that can be served on Earth and in space.
Kuruminoki, a cafe-cum-grocery store, can be found next to the Japan Railways track in a residential area of Nara dotted with little old temples. It is easy to spot, as people line up to secure one of the 80 lunch servings offered each day.
A native of Takamatsu, Yukiko Ishimura, who opened the store 33 years ago, was living at that time in Nara's suburbs after getting married.