I love it there too, though I only ate it at 7-Eleven. We have Hiroshima style okonomiyaki restaurants around here, so I’m not missing out on much. Whenever we go, we get a car and take a road trip around different sections of the country, hitting every rest stop along the way. I plan the road trips specifically so I can see all the road stops. I love how they are all unique to the town they are near. Last year we were going between Tokyo to Kyoto, so we were able to see Nara and everything else in between.
I’ve been to all those places. Where is it you live now that you can eat so well?
Southern California. Torrance, Little Tokyo, Irvine, all these restaurants are a short car ride away. We have Japanese supermarkets so I can cook any of it at home too. What I can’t find around here is my favorite foods from Miyazaki, so what I can’t cook on my own, I’m out of luck, dreaming about it till the next time I can go.
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We have a couple of markets and one of my best friends is Japanese so we exchange recipes but the only restaurant that is actually owned and operated by someone from Japan only cooks authentic food when most of us guijin 
have left the restaurant.
Where abouts are you located? I know Mitsuwa is the only Japanese chain across the country that I know of. Over here I prefer a chain called Tokyo Central (or Marukai… The updated stores are called Tokyo central).
There is a recipe blog I follow called Just One Cookbook. She’s got alot of good Japanese recipes, but she’s from a different region than my husband, so not all the recipes are what we want. For example, my husband’s favorite food is called chicken nanban, and a restaurant in Miyazaki is famous for it. Her recipe is no where near it, it’s not even the same style of preparation. Luckily I know how to make it.
I think I also get recipes off of Just Hungry. Hers are very good too. If you have access to the ingredients, then preparing Japanese food is easy and rewarding… Though sometimes time consuming. The new year’s food takes me 3 days to prepare (when I was first learning it took me a week).
Personally, I like cooking Korean food… I get to just throw all the ingredients into one pot and forget about it for a while 
. I just hate all the chopping 
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I’m basically in Joplin Missouri, southwest corner of the state. I love all Asian cuisine, but Japanese is my favorite although authentic is tuff to find here. My market is just a local one owned by a friend of mine. He started with Vietnamese items but now has several ethnic choices as well.
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