Izakaya, Unit U9, Mermaid Quay, Cardiff Bay (029 2049 2939)
Izakaya? Comedy answer: yes it is, particularly after a night out in Cardiff. Straight answer: the Japanese word for sharing. This waterside eatery — run by a Welsh/Japanese husband-and-wife team — isn’t so much a restaurant as a re-creation of a Tokyo pub. The food, served tapas-style, runs through the whole repertoire, from edamame (soy beans) and lotus root in soy sauce to tempura, yakitori (grilled meats) and tonkatsu (a sort of pork schnitzel), and is generally well done. The sushi, in particular, is skilfully made with fabulously fresh fish.

The Rosemary, Stanton House Hotel, Stanton Fitzwarren, Wiltshire (01793 861777)
Yes, it sounds like it should be serving cream teas to blue rinses, but the food and chefs at this incongruous Japanese outpost in the shires are authentically Nipponese — and, thanks to the nearby Honda factory (which, incidentally, owns the place), so are many of the customers. The menu runs to seven different bento boxes, sashimi and teppanyaki, as well as endless other things you’ve never heard of. A word of advice, though: if you’re planning a visit, don’t leave it too long. As Confucius might have said — “Absence makes the heart go Honda” (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Izzi, 119 Lothian Road, Edinburgh (0131 466 9888)
Any Tokyo restaurant worth its sake has plastic demo food in the window. Here it looks so realistic it puts joke-shop dog turds to shame. My advice is to point like a lunatic at the scallop sushi: it’s sea fresh and full of salty flavours and slips down as easily as the Titanic. Izzi boasts the only teppanyaki grill in Edinburgh, under the command of a young Japanese chef so tall he spends most of his time with his head up the extractor fan. Happily, he can still do things with a duck breast and a chopper that will make you smack your lips like a deranged Mike Tyson.

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