We deliberately planned a smaller city to be out next stop after Tokyo. Matsumoto only has around 240,000 people and most tourists skip it or just spend 1 night. It really only has enough attractions for 1 or 2 nights but we don’t travel that way. We planned 4 nights in Matsumoto to give us a better chance of seeing real Japan. In this case, it gave us a chance to find some really fun small restaurants and not have to worry about beating the Tokyo crowds to get a table. Of course, we saw the tourist spots but we are going to remember Matsumoto by what we ate.
Let’s start with the tourist spots we visited. The main attraction in town is the Matsumoto castle. I was able to climb to the top of the 16th century tower to get a view of old castle grounds. There aren’t that many “castles” left in Japan so this one is pretty significant. The other tourist sites include a history museum, an art museum, and a couple of streets filled with boutique shops and restaurants in Japanese old fashioned buildings. We saw everything. The art museum had a lot of Yayoi Kusama installations, as she was born and grew up in Matsumoto. We have seen her stuff in several museums all over the world and is always fun to see her freaky mirrors and things painted with polka dots.
We were out of tourist attractions in Matsumoto, so we took a day trip to a Wasabi farm – the Daio Wasabi farm, the largest in Japan. We had recently been to a ginger factory in Australia and we have enjoyed a few garlic festivals so this seemed like a perfect destination. And I love wasabi!!!! The farm was beautiful and it was interesting to see the way the river gets diverted to make sure the wasabi plant roots are always covered by cold mountain water. There were black tarps over everything to make sure they didn’t get too much sun. We had some Japanese style burgers, wasabi fries and finished it off with some wasabi ice cream. I then took way too many pictures of their old water wheel along a picturesque stream.
Now back to the food that I promised. We really enjoyed strolling through the streets of town trying to identify our next meal among the many different types of Japanese food. There are so many reasonably priced restaurants with fun foods to try. One of the regional specialties if sanzoku-yaki which is huge pieces of ginger-garlicy fried chicken chunks similar to karaage. It was hard for me not to order this for every meal.
One night we ended up in a small one-man run teppanyaki restaurant. We have had Benihana style japanese bbq teppenyaki many times in America but this place was nothing like that. We didn’t see the onion volcanos or bad puns about egg rolls. We ordered some yakitori (meat sticks) and let him choose what kind of meat. We got chicken hearts, chicken livers, chicken neck meat, chicken skin and just some regular chicken thigh meat. We were troopers and ate it all, but probably won’t order the chef’s surprise again. We also ordered some okonomiyaki (cabbage pancake) which was amazing!
Another night we ended up in a super small sushi restaurant run by a guy that must be in his 80’s. It was fun to watch him prepare the sushi in front of us just like he has been doing for over 50 years. He even blessed our sushi before he served it to us. Great food and a great experience.
Matsumoto is not a must see Japan destination but it was a must see for us. We needed a smaller place where we can learn more about the Japanese people and food. It is much easier to do it here than in the big cities. We are now heading for our next mid-size city of Kanazawa!!!