This last part of my four-part recap of our winter trip to Japan covers some suggestions of what to eat in Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Osaka. This part was a little tricky to write because we ate a lot of informal meals over the holiday due to the shear abundance of available markets and festivals and the holiday closure of many more formal sit-down restaurants. We also only spent a day each in Hiroshima and Osaka, and didn't really have any meals specific to those areas (except one, which is noted).

That said, I was in heaven with the festival food, and discovered how much variety there is to Japanese cuisine; it's not all just sushi and ramen. I should note that I haven't done a very good job of recording all the candies and other snack foods that we saw on our trip, but I'm afraid my memory (and my camera's memory) have failed me there, and I'll just have to return in the future to blog about that!

After spending some time in Tokyo, we decided to board one of Japan's famous bullet trains and head down the coast. Since we had the time and wanted to see as much as possible, it made sense to use Japan's extensive train network to get around. There were many places that we wanted to see, and we ended up scheduling three days in Kyoto for New Years, as well as a day-trip to Osaka and a day-trip to Hiroshima using Kyoto as our base. We wanted to visit Kyoto in particular because it's known for the large number of temples in and around the city. Osaka became a destination point because it was another major city nearby, and Hiroshima made the list because we were interested in seeing a city that looms so large in American nuclear history.