Kaniya Horobetsu Shiretoko — Restaurant in Shari

Typical of many Japanese seafood retailers, there’s an attached eatery. It’s only 500m down the road from the excellent Hotel Club Kifu Shiretoko. I got in at 930am expecting a queue, but I was surprised to find myself to be the only customer. Then again, it was raining, and it was the low season for Shiretoko.

The moment I walked in, it was a sense of nostalgia, probably because of the enka music blasting in the background. There’s a counter to sit on to eat, where it faces out to the sea. Such a pity it was a miserable wet day but you can imagine how gorgeous it’d be if it was sunny. I ordered the sanshouku Don and as expected, it was really fresh.

Typical of many local establishments, parking is very limited, perhaps...

Great place to taste some local seafood!

We came for lunch on two separate occasions and ordered different varieties of kaisen-don. This buys you a bowl of rice topped with your seafood of choice. In our case, this mostly meant uni (sea urchin). The quality was amazing, and apparently, all uni was sourced from the coasts of the Shiretoko peninsula. As the name of the place suggests (kani meaning crab), they do have a big selection of live crabs as well. The crab meat on our kaisen-don was indeed solid, with a sweet and juicy taste. So if you are around and fancy some good seafood, this is a...

This is a fish market plus restaurant. All seafood are market price and they can cook it for you if you would like to eat it there. We got the miso crab and it was ¥1,500/lb for the day. It was definitely fresh. The king crab is huge! It could probably...