The delightful comedy-drama about a failed comic turned producer of an adventure guide for lovers of udon was shot on location in Kagawa prefecture, home to hundreds of noodle shops specialising in the area's famed sanuki udon. A lifelong udon fan, Motohiro and his crew visited nearly 200 udon shops and featured a fair few of them in his film.

Those looking for "the soul food of Japan" should be able to satisfy their cravings at one of Marugame Seimen's Hong Kong branches.

Many years ago, when I was living in the US, I came across a 1997 Hong Kong film by Patrick Leung Pak-kin that made an impact on me, making me realise that fruit salads can be enticing dishes.

A character-driven drama with a local feel, tells its story almost entirely from the perspective of a young, inexperienced police detective (played by Leo Ku Kui-kei) who befriends a prostitute (played by Charlie Yeung Choi-nei) with the clichéd heart of gold, and an uncommon love of colourful concoctions consisting of various fruits.

After watching her happily dig into her mixed fruit selection, I had a strong urge to do the same — something that I've subsequently repeated at various branches of mango dessert specialist Hui Lau Shan.

A quirky romantic drama about two strangers who accidentally meet after a man's girlfriend moves out of her apartment without telling him, Lee Jeong-hyang's reportedly was based on events from the female director-scriptwriter's life.

Considered a classic of 1990s South Korean cinema, it was one of the first Korean films I saw — and I can pinpoint the scene in which a man and a woman share a large bowl of red, piping hot as making me want to try the Korean dish which, I subsequently learnt, comes in varieties including tofu (), pollock roe () and even spam or hot dogs (— literally "army stew").

An affecting drama about a family whose remaining members have been scarred by the premature loss of a loved one (the eldest son and heir, to be precise), Hirokazu Koreeda's beautifully crafted most certainly has its sad sections, but is also full of the sense that life, and people, have to keep going even after tragedy strikes.

In view of this, maybe it's not so weird that I came away from a screening of the 2008 film with a massive craving for Japanese food. In particular, I wanted so much to eat the corn tempura that Kiki Kirin's maternal character made for three generations of her family — that whenever I eat at Yardbird I never can resist ordering that particular dish.

At the end of , I turned to my husband and said, "I really want to eat fugu shirako." He said, "You do know that film was about death!" Of course I knew that — it would have been hard to miss. The film shows a young man, Daigo Kobayashi, who, failing to make a career as a professional cellist, returns to his quiet hometown and starts to train to be a mortician. Far from being a seedy, creepy profession, the job of a shows the beauty of the Japanese ritual of preparing a body to be buried.

But due to the societal taboos about death, Kobayashi struggles with this new job. His wise, dignified boss, Sasaki, knowing that Kobayashi has come to him with the intention of quitting, prepares a meal. One of the dishes is grilled , or pufferfish sperm. The way they eat it — using their hands, blowing on it to cool it down, then slurping it up — which sounds disgusting, but isn't — made me really want to try it (I've eaten shirako before, but not that of pufferfish). So I called chef Satoru Mukogawa of one of my favourite restaurants, Sushi Kuu. It took him a few days to source it, but he called me. Over the years, he's prepared it for me in several ways: tempura (which is too rich), grilled (delicious) and chawan mushi (even better).