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.