Soft serve – or sofuto kurīmu as it’s called here – has been a part of Japanese culture since the 1950s, when it first appeared at a Tokyo amusement park and quickly won the hearts (and taste buds) of the country.

Over the years, Japan has turned this cold treat into something close to art: smooth, creamy, and impossibly light.

It’s available just about everywhere – from busy street corners to quiet mountain shrines – in popular flavors like matcha, black sesame, yuzu, and even sweet potato.

But the one flavor that always seems to elude me is coffee. When I do find it, it’s usually by chance – at a small café or a countryside ice cream stand – and it tastes just glorious!

Done right, it’s not too sweet with just the right hint of bitterness, and that unmistakable roasted coffee bean aroma. It’s one of those fleeting Japanese treats I’ll remember long after I’ve left.

Sunday. Night. Kyoto. Rain. Long-awaited.

Our first week in Kyoto has been intense – to put it mildly. We’ve been crashing early, waking up at dawn, getting a few hours of work done, and then heading out to shoot stills and video in this surprisingly walkable city that never stops delivering new impressions and experiences.

Of all the university cities in Japan, it turns out Kyoto has by far the highest concentration of programmes in design, art and culture. You can feel it everywhere – in the architecture, the graphic design, the signage, the packaging, the way visual communication is woven into everyday life.

Yesterday, Saturday, we walked halfway up Mt Otowa – the mountain where the 1,200-year-old, UNESCO-listed temple Kiyomizu-dera (清水寺) rises above the city.

It was packed with people, but still incredibly beautiful. At one point, we stopped for a bowl of soba noodles topped with a generous slice of tofu and finely sliced spring onion. Simple, perfect, unforgettable.

During a short break on the way up we met a young American aircraft mechanic from Arkansas, currently stationed at Komatsu Air Base. He works exclusively on the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II – the version that only needs a very short runway and can land vertically (STOVL).

Not surprisingly, he was genuinely excited about his new life in Japan. He told us he earns less here than back home, but still expects to save more while he’s stationed in Komatsu. I couldn’t help pointing out (maybe a bit fatherly) that when his three-year contract is over, what he will really have earned is a wealth of experiences he’d never have had if he had stayed on his home base in the States.

At our nearest 7-Eleven, two guys and a woman from Kandy in Sri Lanka work behind the counter – the same city we visited a few years ago. The three of them are at least as polite and friendly as their Japanese colleagues, but their English is noticeably better. Encounters like that make the city feel both bigger and smaller at the same time.

Later I showed Charlotte a clip from one of Bill Murray’s funniest scenes in Lost in Translation. After that I couldn’t stop saying “Lip my stockings” for hours. I sometimes latch onto things like that a bit too easily.

Caramba!

Yesterday it happened. It was inevitable. Sooner or later we both knew it would hit. We were just surprised it took this long. Fortunately, we were able to handle it with a few good solutions.

I’m talking, of course, about the jalapeño-taco-guacamole-tequila-nachos withdrawal that suddenly arrived yesterday afternoon when a same-age DJ at Good Morning Record Bar put on the Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass single Mexican Shuffle.

Because the Mexican place Dumas hadn’t opened yet at five, we literally crossed the alley to the Tex-Mex taquería Siesta. There we shared a plate of nachos with guacamole and five spicy tacos, washed down with two cold Asahi and a couple of shots of Patrón. The little detour was perfectly soundtracked by Pet Sounds, playing at just the right volume through the bar’s speakers.

Today, the rain poured down. It’s a bit of a shame for other visitors, but for us it was a welcome pause – time to let the past days sink in and to sort through all the impressions so far.

We’re so inspired by Kyoto that Charlotte has now registered the – surprisingly available – domain kyotodesignhotels.com, which she plans to launch in early 2026. Stay tuned.

Today, you, our dearest, wonderful Elle, turn 25!

Even though we can’t celebrate you in the family’s traditional way – with presents, champagne, and strawberries in bed – we hope you know that our love for you, today and always, builds bridges across the distance between us. Especially today on this, your twenty-fifth birthday!

That you’re turning 25 feels both unbelievable and completely natural at the same time.
You are a beautiful woman – inside and out – and we are so incredibly proud of you. Not only for who you are – wise, kind, caring, and full of empathy – but also because you continue to challenge yourself and grow intellectually and creatively. Watching your journey fills us with indescribable joy, admiration, and, of course, love.

We know you’ll celebrate – and be celebrated – with lots of laughter, love, surrounded by your dearest friends, the ones who make you feel truly good on this very special day.

So Elle, Hip, Hip – hooray! Congratulations! ☀️

From Mikado to Yamato: A 25-Year Arc of Japanese Food

My love for Japanese food didn’t start in Tokyo or Osaka – it began in Gothenburg, Sweden, some forty years ago at a small restaurant called Mikado.

I ate there so often the staff started recognizing me. I even celebrated my 25th birthday there with my closest friends. One of them, Magnus, gave me several odd-shaped canvases for me to paint on. Possibly one of the most thoughtful presents I’ve ever received.

Mikado did serve sushi, but if memory serves, the main event was the teppanyaki bar in the center of the room – culinary theatre long before “food experiences” became a thing.  The chef’s metal spatulas clinked against the hot plate under the sizzle of beef and vegetables. Garlic hit the steel and bloomed. Soy and butter caramelized the green onions and glazed the tender meat.

The measured simplicity hooked me.

Back then, Japanese food in Sweden was a little bit like a secret – you had to seek it out, and know it wasn’t “like Chinese.” Instead, it was beautifully presented: sliced and diced, balanced, colorful yet restrained. Always visually appealing.

Over the weekend, we visited Yamato Koji Park soy sauce factory, and it was across the alley that I shot this lunch tray: deep-fried squid, marlin, and cod. Hot from the oil, lightly salted – as delicious as fried fish can be, more texture than flavor, but still tasty. The crunch gave way to bounce and flake, and the soy we’d just learned about tied everything together.

Forty years later, Japanese food remains my favorite. Mikado planted the seed; alleyway lunches in Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, and now Kanazawa, as well as countless bowls and plates elsewhere, kept it growing. If pressed, I’d still call Japanese food the tastiest cuisine in the world – followed closely by the Greek kitchen.

Thursday Thoughts in Kanazawa

When the hotel toilet senses that I’m approaching, a soft blue light glows from the bowl, followed by a gentle pre-rinse. Like a prelude – or foreplay. When I’m done, it flushes automatically.

The other day, while sitting on the heated toilet seat made by the Japanese brand Toto, the song “You Are the Flower” started playing on my phone. Coincidence or cosmic comedy?

There’s a calm in Kanazawa – a port city about the size of Gothenburg – unlike anything I’ve experienced elsewhere in Japan. Except perhaps in Hiroshima, where the stillness weighed a bit too heavily, especially around the ruin that remains after Enola Gay dropped Little Boy over the city.

Can’t help but think of Gojira movies every time I hear fire trucks or ambulances here.

Sometimes we just don’t have the energy to eat out, especially after a long day when the step counter shows we’ve walked 25,000 steps. Then we opt for a hotel room picnic.

I calculated that Charlotte and I have eaten at least 9,000 meals together since we met in 1996.

With a bag full of sushi trays, containers with veggie sticks, and a couple of Asahis we’ve picked up from Family Mart, 7-Eleven, or Lawson, we’re set for dinner on one of the room’s little bedside tables. It works – and it’s actually quite cozy.

Dining at a simple izakaya along our street usually runs just over 10 USD per person. Our picnics cost about half that.

Yesterday before dinner, I filled the small bathtub and fell asleep to a gloomy prophecy about the AI bubble soon bursting – and the looming risk that the world will then plunge into a bottomless economic crisis. Oh well.

I think the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa is world-class. There was breadth, depth, and height in every exhibition I saw yesterday.

I had a hot dog for lunch yesterday at an obscure sausage stand tucked inside a little red wooden house in the samurai district. Perhaps a blasphemous act of unforgivable proportions – but I couldn’t resist. It is your destiny, Luke.

There’s a distinction between being liked and being tolerated. But even at sixty-two, I sometimes struggle to tell the difference.

Some Japanese people I meet can barely contain their enthusiasm when interacting with me. Others don’t see me at all. To them, I feel kind of invisible.

A truly fascinating social aspect of traveling in Japan is how you make an extra effort to match the level of politeness and respect that Japanese people display – regardless of what they might actually think or feel about us gaijin (外国人). It sort of brings out my best game. I like that.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the social climate in Japan reminds me of how it was in the US as a kid and how it used to be in Sweden when I moved there in the 1970s.

At the large tourist information office in the Katamachi area, along Chome Street, the staff are incredibly friendly. Those I’ve spoken with speak almost fluent English.

I can’t fathom how the politicians in Malmö can be so clueless that they fail to see the value of having a proper tourist office in Sweden’s third-largest city. Embarrassing.

I love how almost nothing is left to chance here. Everything has its place – has been designed or crafted to clarify or at least make things less ugly.

We’re staying a few doors down from St. Louise Jigger’s Bar, where time stands still. The place would have been a bit too stiff for Bukowski, but Hitchens would probably have had a hard time tearing himself away from one of the creaky barstools.

Next to St. Louise Jigger’s Bar is a gentlemen’s club with an entrance one floor down, where the doorman standing on the street looks like a character from Tony Scott’s excellent film noir Black Rain with Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia.

We have a few days left in Kanazawa before the autumn tour through the Land of the Rising Sun heads south.

If you’ve read this far, I want to thank you for trudging through my scattered thoughts and more or less interesting observations.

I’m emptying myself of impressions – to make room for new ones. Tomorrow we’re visiting a soy sauce factory.

It’s Sunday in Kanazawa.

Dipping those green, crispy squid pieces into the bowl of creamy wasabi mayo during last night’s dinner felt almost sinful. It was as if the Shinto gods Izanagi and Izanami had conspired to create this irresistible recipe, best washed down with a pint of cold Asahi. Okay, two pints.

I love food, and I’ll clearly travel as far as it takes just to relive wonderful culinary memories. At the same time, I also want to challenge myself and add a few new experiences along the way.

At this age, meals aren’t just one of the highlights of the day – they’re also what make the increasingly taxing long-haul trips worth the pain. “If you want the good things in life, you have to put up with a little hardship,” I can hear my grandmother Agnes saying.

All the food here in Japan is genuinely delicious. Even the sushi in the convenience stores like Lawson, Family Mart, and 7-Eleven tastes surprisingly good.

Sure, fast food culture exists in Japan. The difference is that what’s offered here – at least in local places as opposed to the big American fast-food chains – is mostly reasonably healthy food where portions match the calorie needs of what a normal human being realistically requires for nourishment and sustenance.

No, I don’t think Ozempic is going to be a hit in Japan.

Yesterday morning, before we got on the Shinkansen from Osaka, I bought a beautiful little bento box at the station. It was filled with raw fish, smoked eel, warm rice, and pickled vegetables, and cost about $3 / SEK 30 (500 yen).

Eating that tangy, crunchy lunch while the Japanese countryside flickered past at a little over 300 km/h (around 185 mph) was both a visual and culinary reminder of how incredibly lucky we are – not just to experience so many interesting things, but also to get so many opportunities to enjoy such scrumptious meals.

Yes, we’ve very deliberately steered our lives and our small company so we can work creatively with the things we love: traveling, experiencing other cultures, and – hopefully – inspiring the people who take part in what we share through our websites and social media channels.

It has never been cheaper to experience Japan than it is right now. The difference from my first visit in 2005 is enormous. And while I feel for the Japanese economy, as a tourist it’s nothing short of a godsend to enjoy this awe-inspiring culture without breaking the bank.

We literally pinch ourselves every time the bill arrives from the always polite restaurant staff.

And tipping isn’t accepted here. Why? Because restaurant owners actually pay their employees a wage they can live on. What a concept.

Last night we spoke with a young German couple, and I told them that it costs less to eat a great meal at a restaurant here in Japan than it does to buy food at the low-cost German supermarket chain Lidl in Malmö.

They laughed in recognition, and we all just shook our heads at the contrast in our upside-down world.

But why are we in Kanazawa?

Because when the tireless wanderer Anthony Bourdain came here with his friend, the Japanese master sushi chef Masayoshi “Masa” Takayama, he loved the low-key atmosphere – not to mention the almost unbelievable density of fish and seafood restaurants.

When I saw that episode, I knew I had to come here – to eat, to photograph, and eventually to write about my experiences.

Bourdain’s footsteps are, of course, way too big for me to step into. But I still like to think that if we had, by chance, run into each other in some grimy little bar down a dimly lit alley here in Kanazawa, we could’ve slipped into a “Suntory time” moment.

We would’ve had a few glasses of Japanese whisky (or bourbon – the same Japanese company also owns both Maker’s Mark and Jim Beam) and talked about travel, about how hard it is to actually live in the moment, about the bottomless love we have for our daughters, about the aches that come with getting older, and about the endless search for something that feels like lasting happiness.

We might have swapped Instagram handles, probably never seen each other again – but neither of us would have forgotten the moment two restless souls met in a dive bar in Kanazawa.

Charlotte captured this during last night’s delicious dinner here in Umeda, Osaka, Japan. We ate at the same place I’d frequented several times during my visit in January. Osaka was chilly then, but now it’s perfect weather, around 18–23 °C. Like a nice Swedish summer.

After a month of photography in Bangkok’s relentless heat and humidity, it’s bliss to work in cool air for a while – like going from sauna to sea, so to speak.

While here in Osaka, we’ll focus on Umeda, Dōtonbori, the cozy, artsy alleys of Nakazakichō I checked out earlier this year, and Nakatsu, which Time Out just crowned one of the world’s coolest neighborhoods.

Lucky us: the yen has slipped another ~10% since the start of the year. The Swedish krona is practically grinning like the U.S. dollar over here – weird and wonderful in equal measure.

Our first visit to the “Land of the Rising Sun” was 15 years ago, when we were on assignment for two Swedish travel magazines (Aftonbladet Resa and Allt om Resor). We ended up with five or six features covering everything from food and love hotels to Roppongi’s nightlife and the trendy streets of Harajuku.

Elle was with us back then and was just as enthusiastic as we were, and everything the Japanese cuisine offered – delicious and varied – was devoured with a smile.

On the Thai Airways flight over, we shared a row with a friendly Japanese man our age who spoke fluent English after many years working in L.A. He looked a bit like Mr. Miyagi – wax on, wax off – and he even had a black belt in karate.

Fifth visit to Japan, and I’m still pleasantly surprised every time I rediscover the heated toilet seat – a true milestone of civilization if ever there was one.

Here in Umeda, our hotel room’s floor area is about a third of what we had during a month in Bangkok. On the other hand, it’s fitted with super-smart, high-quality solutions – perfect for compact living – so we don’t really miss anything except a bit of floor space and maybe a couple of extra hooks.

This trip will take us to four new cities (for us), which should result in several inspiring stories and at least one book filled with highlights from our Japanese adventures.

Stay tuned…

This man, maybe my age, maybe older, pushing a cart stacked with popcorn, was my only shot that entire day.

A livelihood on wheels.

As a popcorn buff, how could I not photograph this?

I love walking around Bangkok and letting serendipity hand me scenes worthy of an exposure or two. This city doesn’t curate itself or hand out ready-made Insta posts or viral TikToks. It offers relentless, gritty authenticity alongside sugar-coated promises and lofty dreams that swell and sweeten as the day wears into night.

I regret not buying a bag of the man’s popcorn.

Met a real-life leading lady at Siam Paragon the other day: Patravadi Mejudhon (aka Lek Patravadi) – the actress who so eloquently played Sritala, the resort owner in The White Lotus Season 3.

Ms Patravadi was graceful, gracious, and every bit as charming off-screen as she is on.

Bonus memory: during Siam Paragon’s inaugural week in December 2005, I was invited through a PR agency to be among the first to scuba dive in the mall’s giant aquarium Sea Life.

Yes, it was definitely surreal to dive with nurse sharks and other sea creatures while hundreds of young and old visitors to the aquarium checked me out from the other side of the thick glass. It was my first and only indoor scuba experience.
Photo credit: Charlotte Raboff