The food pulled its weight as well! While some izakaya seem to focus a lot more on their drink menu than their food menu, Haneto delivers authentic Aomori food.

Our first dish was the kekko miso (also called kaiyaki-miso), a dish featuring sliced, marinated scallops and cooked with egg. The seafood taste isn’t particularly strong, but if you don’t like seafood at all, you might want to skip it. The dish (pictured above) is a little pricey at ¥790 (about US$6.55) per plate.

We also ordered some kuroishi yakisoba, an Aomori variation on the traditional yakisoba dish. The noodles were slightly thicker than standard yakisoba noodles and definitely a great addition to your meal!

This next dish was our favorite: Takko-san garlic chaahan. Takko is a city in Aomori famous for its garlic production, and the garlic was a perfect match for this fried rice.

If you’re a fan of chicken, you’ll definitely want to try the Aomori-san himesakura yakitori, pictured above. Sakurahime chicken is produced, as you have probably already guessed, in Aomori and has fans all over Japan.

Of course, the highlight of the night was enjoying the live tsugaru-jamisen music, performed by Saki Saito.

Though only 21 years old, Saki has been competing in and winning various shamisen competitions throughout the country, starting when she was only 14! She performs at Haneto every Saturday and irregularly on weekdays (depending on her university class schedule).

For the atmosphere, food and drink, everything came to about ¥8,000 (US$77) for two people. If you decide to stop by Haneto, we definitely recommend getting a reservation, and calling ahead to check if Saki is playing is a must, even if you’re going on a Saturday.