March 29th, Tempra Takao

My friend Ryoko, who works in the marketing department of a foreign game company, is a petite and adorable Japanese woman from Fukuoka. Fukuoka, her hometown, is a thriving port city renowned for its trade and rich food culture.

Even in Tokyo, you can savor the taste of a tempura restaurant with its main branch in Fukuoka. It's located on the 7th floor of Shibuya Parco. You can easily get there by walking from Hachiko(the famous dog statue) to Shibuya Center gai and then through Spain zaka, taking about 10 minutes.

There's always a queue in front of the shop. The most popular dish is "Tendon," the tempura rice bowl, where freshly fried tempura is placed on top of rice and drizzled with a sweet and savory soy sauce. It costs just a little over 1000 yen. Along with it, you get lotus root pickles and Hakata's specialty spicy cod roe. Despite having lived in Japan for over 30 years and tasted numerous tempura dishes, this was the first time I experienced such delicious tempura.