5 Best Restaurants in Western Honshu, Japan

Set riverside with fantastic views of Okayama Castle, this small cafe and restaurant is the perfect place to grab lunch or coffee when exploring the castle and Korakuen Garden. You can also rent a swan boat to paddle around on the Asahi River after your meal. Dishes include bamboo shoot udon and the Okayama local pork bowl.

The Okonomimura Building contains around 20 shops that all serve okonomiyaki (literally, "as you like it grilled"). Okonomiyaki is best described as an everything omelet, topped with bits of shrimp, pork, squid, or chicken, cabbage, and bean sprouts. Different areas of Japan make different okonomiyaki; in Hiroshima the ingredients are layered rather than mixed, and they throw in lots of fried noodles. Seating in these lively shops, which are generally open late, is either at a wide counter in front of a grill or at a table with its own grill. This complex is near the Hondori shopping street, just west of Chuo-dori.

If you're pressed for time but want to grab a decent lunch, try some warigo soba, a local buckwheat-noodle specialty. Ohashi has a filling, healthful set lunch. An early dinner is also possible, since the restaurant is open from 5 until around 8 pm.

Colorful local characters come to this casual restaurant for beer and sake and seiro-soba (thin buckwheat noodles served in steaming-hot baskets) and hot tempura served on fragrant handmade cypress trays. The restaurant is usually open by 11 am (or when the noodles are ready), but it closes at 6 (or when all the noodles are gone), so only a very early dinner is possible here.

Surrounded by a colorful garden, the dining area at this traditional house is the best place to try the sanshoku warigo soba, a local specialty where three soba dishes are served in lacquerware with each dish having a different topping (quail egg, grated yam, grated radish). Located near the Buke Yashiki and Lafcadio Hearn House, it offers a relaxing break after a morning of sightseeing.