Favourite Regional Food?

@Mfedley, sorry for the late response. I'm not Orthodox, but I have lot of Orthodox relatives. Being Jewish does play a role though in my being a vegetarian and is honestly one of the reasons I always find it frustrating when people on this forum talk about how you can't enjoy Japan if you are vegetarian. You can.
It just might be harder sometimes, though at least pre-Pandemic I found it getting easier each trip, because more places were willing to at least work with you.

It's honestly hard to make a good NY style pickle. I've had some really bad ones. Don't eat any pickles that are made for Passover, they're generally pretty bad. If you get a chance, I highly recommend prune hamantaschen if your Orthodox School is giving them out for Purim. I make mine from scratch and they're the best. Purim is on the 16th.

I actually really like a lot of Japanese soft serve ice cream. Outside of the various flavors of dole whip, most US soft serve is kind of gross. I don't know what Japan does right, but their soft serve, even the vanilla is great. At one point, I was trying all the regional and seasonal variations I could find that were vegetarian (so no squid ink at Tojimbo.) I had a really lovely blueberry soft serve once and a delicious mikan one. The worst flavor I've ever tried was momiji in Arashiyama. Since I tend to go to Japan in the Summer, soft serve is very needed. I do like kakigori too, but I prefer Hawaiian shave ice. I regret I only went to Breakwater once while visiting Maui.

Hard question to answer, there are so many but one of my favourites is Gyutan (grilled ox tongue) which is very popular in Miyagi prefecture. Second one might be Kanazawa curry which is thicker than the normal curry rice with pork cutlet.

I also really like miso katsu (Aichi) and Hiroshima style okonomiyaki. Finally a good tonkotsu ramen from Fukuoka is also great.

Many kinds of food but those would be my top 5: 1- Gyutan 2- Kanazawa curry rice 3- Miso katsu 4- Hiroshima okonomiyaki and 5- Tonkotsu ramen

金沢のお寿司。
名古屋のみそかつ。