TOKYO - Hot and sour cuttlefish roe soup, veal in brown sauce, and goose meat fried with Chinese water chestnut.

These were some of the lip-smacking dishes in an eight-course meal prepared for visiting Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono in Beijing on Sunday (Jan 28). His meeting with Chinese counterpart Wang Yi included a working lunch at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, which is often used to host visiting dignitaries.

Mr Kono, who tweets in Japanese under the account @konotarogomame and in English under @konotaromp, uploaded a photograph of the menu onto Twitter, saying: "It was absolutely delicious!"

He followed up with another Twitter post on Monday showing a wefie taken with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying, who was sporting a toothy grin.

"With a famous Chinese lady!" he tweeted, but without specifying where or when the picture was taken.

Mr Kono's much-watched visit was the first by a Japanese Foreign Minister to Beijing in nearly two years.

His tweets, which were picked up by Chinese media, also went viral in Japan.

His photo with Ms Hua racked up 282 comments, 2,100 retweets and 4,800 likes, as of 6.30pm in Japan (5.30pm in Singapore) on Tuesday.

Many netizens lauded the photo as a sign of the budding Sino-Japanese friendship.