‘A must for for all lovers of Japanese cuisine. Where else can an English-speaking foodie learn … how to make a chanko nabe hot-pot good enough to please a sumo wrestler?’

Japan and the Japanese dropped from the sky. The archipelago of 3,000 islands and its people were created by the deities Izanagi and Izanami, according to sacred Shinto texts. The divine brother and sister joined “their majestic parts in a majestic union” and made a new world.

From its ancient creation myths to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, the otherness of Japanese culture has fascinated the Western mind – at least every mind except that of the English travel and food writer Michael Booth. To Michael – described by a Japanese friend as a “no-brain-whitey-gaijn” – the country seemed to be a dull place. Its food was all about appearance, not flavour. Every dish was fat-free and drowned in soy sauce. Its recipes came from Thailand, China and the Portuguese. Booth believed, “All you need to make good Japanese food is a sharp knife and a good fishmonger.” How wrong he proved himself to be.

Intrigued by Oriental longevity, and worried about his own expanding Western waistline, Booth decided to travel across Japan, discovering “methodically, greedily” the secrets of its national cuisine. Over a period of three months, he lunched with Sumo wrestlers, massaged the world’s most expensive cows and visited a dog café. He met celebrity rock star chefs. He learnt about the sake crisis and MSG. He dropped by a parasite museum and the world’s largest cookery school. He shopped at the Tsukiji fish market (which shifts two million kilos of seafood every day from “chunks of vampish red whale meat to tiny brown shrimps the size of an eyelash”). He even risked a serving of notorious fugu puffer fish (chefs who prepare the potentially-deadly dish need two years’ training and a licence).

Booth made his journey in the company of his wife Lissen and sons Ansger, six, and Emil, four; fussy eaters who prefer “potato-based food stuffs shaped like dinosaurs”. Their presence provided diverting entertainment. But his more important fellow-traveller was Shizuo Tsuji’s seminal book Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art. Through its pages Booth began to appreciate Japanese philosophy and the delicate pageantry of its cuisine. He came to understand the fundamental importance of the seasons in its food, the obsession with freshness and simplicity, even the spiritual meaning of rice.

This transformation is the most moving part of Sushi and Beyond. For example, long after the roving family had left Hokkaido, Booth found himself haunted by the elusive flavour of Sapporo crabs (“sensuous to the point of perversion”). He grew to appreciate the vast range of ramen noodles (while learning to slurp in appreciation). Above all, he was transformed by his meal at Mibu, Japan’s finest restaurant which guests may attend only on invitation from the owner. The “transcendent” meal at Mibu was “a seismic moment in my life as an eater”, he wrote, where he enjoyed the best sashimi, aubergine, eel and dashi he’d ever tasted. The flavours and aroma literally made him shudder with pleasure “like a mini-orgasm”.

On his trip, Booth also came to appreciate the difference between European and Japanese cooks. He learned that in France, for example, chefs want to change the ingredients they cook, putting their individual mark on them, while in Japan the ingredients are considered a gift from God that should not be altered too much. “In other words, in Japan the chefs work with what God provides, in France the chefs think they are God.”

Booth’s descriptions of food made my mouth water: a miso soup was served with “a crispy-sweet, raggedy fritter of scallops each the size of Emil’s fingernail”, tempura was made with “crunchy, gnarled batter”. But his book could have been much, much stronger with hard editing. No travel narrative is enhanced by details of delayed flights or the admission that the author browses through tourist brochures. Readers won’t respect the confession that his Japanese fixer “somehow knows what I wanted to see, even when I didn’t really know it myself”. And a number of journalistic interviews could have been omitted altogether. The extraneous material blurs the book’s focus, giving it a casualness which undermines the profundity of Booth’s journey. Like good soya sauce, Sushi and Beyond needed a longer distillation period to achieve its true potential.

That said, this book is a must for all lovers of Japanese cuisine. Where else can an English-speaking foodie learn about tako yaki octopus doughnuts, floral-flavoured Okinawan sweet potato ice cream (part of the reason why Okinawans live longer than anyone else on the planet) and how to make a chanko nabe hot-pot good enough to please a sumo wrestler?

• Rory MacLean‘s latest book Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India is published by Penguin in the UK and by IG Publishing in the States. His UK top tens Stalin’s Nose and Under the Dragon are available in Tauris Parke Paperbacks.