Eat
Japanese cuisine, renowned for its emphasis on fresh, seasonal ingredients, has taken the world by storm. The key ingredient of most meals is white rice, usually served steamed, and in fact its Japanese word gohan also means "meal". Soybeans are a key source of protein and take many forms, notably the miso soup served with almost every meal, but also tōfu bean curd and the ubiquitous soy sauce (shōyu). Seafood features heavily in Japanese cuisine, including not only creatures of the sea but many varieties of seaweed as well, and a complete meal is always rounded out by some pickles (tsukemono).
One of the joys of getting out of Tokyo and traveling within Japan is to discover the local specialties. Every region within the country has a number of delightful dishes, based on locally available crops and fish. In Hokkaido try the fresh sashimi and crab. In Nagoya don't miss the okonomiyaki stuffed with green onions.
Japanese food is eaten with chopsticks (hashi), two exceptions being curry rice and fried rice (for which a spoon is used). Eating with chopsticks is a surprisingly easy skill to pick up, although mastering them takes a while. Some chopstick guidelines to be aware of:
- Never place or leave chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice, and never pass something from your chopsticks to another person's chopsticks. These are associated with funerary rites. If you want to give a piece of food to someone, let them take it from your plate, or place it directly on their plate.
- When you are done using chopsticks, you can rest them across the edge of your bowl or plate. Most nicer restaurants put a small wooden or ceramic chopstick rest (hashi-oki) at each place setting. You can also fold the paper wrapper that the chopsticks come in to construct your own hashi-oki.
- Licking the ends of your chopsticks is considered low-class. Take a bite of your rice instead.
- Using chopsticks to move plates or bowls is rude.
- Pointing at things with your chopsticks is rude. (Pointing at people in general is rude; with chopsticks, doubly so.)
- Spearing food with your chopsticks is generally rude and should only be used as a last resort.
Disposable chopsticks (wari-bashi) are provided in all restaurants as well as with bentō and other take-out foods. It is a myth that you should "whittle" your chopsticks after breaking them apart.
Many Japanese dishes come with different sauces and garnishes. Japanese never put soy sauce on their rice, though they do dip their sushi in it before eating, and they pour it on grilled fish as well. Tonkatsu (pork cutlet) comes with a thicker sauce, tempura comes with a lighter, thinner sauce made from soy sauce and dashi (fish and seaweed soup base), while gyōza (potstickers) are usually dipped in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar and chili oil.
Fugu (blowfish) restaurant, Osaka
The number of restaurants in Japan is stupendous, and you will never run out of places to go. For cultural and practical reasons, Japanese almost never invite guests to their homes, so socializing nearly always involves eating out.
Most Japanese-style restaurants have lunchtime teishoku, or fixed set meals. These typically consist of a meat or fish dish, with a bowl of miso soup, pickles, and rice (often with free extra helpings). These can be as inexpensive as ¥600 yet ample enough even for large appetites. Menus however will for most establishments be in Japanese only; however many restaurants have models (many in exquisite detail) of their meals in their front window, and if you can't read the menu it may be better to take the waiter or waitress outside and point at what you would like.
Restaurants will present you with the check after the meal, and you are expected to pay at the counter when leaving — do not leave payment on the table and walk out. The phrase for "check" is kanjō or kaikei. If it's getting late, a server will usually come to your table to tell you it's time for the "last order."
Many cheap chain eateries have vending machines where you buy a ticket and give it to the server. At most of these restaurants, you'll have to be able to read Japanese to use them, though. At some of these restaurants, there will be plastic displays or photographs of the food with varying prices in front of them. It is often possible to match the price, along with some of the kana (characters) to the choices at the machine. If you're open-minded and flexible, you might get shoyu (soy sauce) ramen instead of miso (fermented soy bean) ramen or you might get katsu (pork cutlet) curry instead of beef curry. You'll always know how much you're spending so you'll never overpay. If your Japanese language skills are limited or non-existent, these restaurants with vending machines are really quite comfortable places because there is limited or no conversation required at these establishments. Most of the customers will be in a hurry, the hired help will usually not be interested in making conversation and will just read your order when they take your ticket and the water/tea, napkins, and eating utensils are either supplied automatically or self-service. Some other places have all you can eat meals called tabehōdai.
Tipping is not customary in Japan. 24-hour "family restaurants" such as Denny's and Jonathan usually have a 10% late-night surcharge.
All-around eateries
While most restaurants in Japanese specialize in a certain type of dish, each neighborhood is guaranteed to have a few shokudō, serving up simple, popular dishes and teishoku sets at affordable prices (¥500-1000). A closely related variant is the bentō-ya, which serves takeout boxes known as o-bentō.
A staple of the shokudō is the donburi, literally "rice bowl", meaning a bowl of rice with a topping. Popular ones include:
- oyakodon — lit. "parent-and-child bowl", usually chicken and egg (but sometimes salmon and roe)
- katsudon — a deep-fried pork cutlet with egg
- gyūdon — beef and onion
- chūkadon — lit. "Chinese bowl", stir-fried vegetables and meat in a thick sauce
You will also frequently encounter Japan's most popular dish, the ubiquitous curry rice (karē raisu) — a thick, mild, brown paste that would leave most Indians scratching their heads. Often the cheapest dish on the menu, a large portion (ōmori) is guaranteed to leave you stuffed.
At the other extreme of the spectrum are super-exclusive ryōtei, the Michelin three-star restaurants of the Japanese food world, which serve gourmet kaiseki meals prepared from the very best seasonal ingredients. Should they condescend to let you in — and many require introductions — you will be looking at upwards of ¥30,000 per head for an experience which, quite frankly, will go right over the heads of most mere mortals visiting Japan for the first time.
Noodles
Even Japanese want something other than rice every now and then, and the obvious alternative is noodles (麺 men). Practically every town and hamlet in Japan boasts its own "famous" noodle dish, and they are often well worth trying.
There are two major noodle types native to Japan: thin buckwheat soba and thick wheat udon. Typically all dishes below can be ordered with either soba or udon depending on your preference and a bowl will only cost a few hundred yen, especially at the standing-room-only noodle joints in and near train stations.
- kake soba — plain broth and maybe a little spring onion on top
- tsukimi soba — soup with a raw egg dropped in named "moon-viewing" because of the resemblance to a moon behind clouds
- kitsune soba — soup with with sweetened thin sheets of deep-fried tofu
- zaru soba — chilled noodles served with a dipping sauce, shallot and wasabi, popular in summer
Chinese egg noodles or rāmen are also very popular but more expensive (¥500+) due to the greater effort involved and the condiments, which typically include a slice of grilled pork and a variety of vegetables. The three major styles of ramen are:
- shio rāmen — salty pork broth
- shoyu rāmen — soy broth
- miso rāmen — miso (soybean paste) broth
- tonkotsu ramen, thick pork broth
Slurping your noodles is not only acceptable, but expected. The exception to this is young ladies who do not want to draw attention to their eating and will often eat their noodles in silence. According to the Japanese it both cools them down and makes them taste better. And pick up a manga comic book to protect yourself from soup spray!
Sushi breakfast in Tsukiji, Tokyo
Perhaps Japan's most famous culinary exports are sushi, raw fish over rice, and sashimi, plain raw fish. These seemingly very simple dishes are in fact quite difficult to prepare properly: the fish must be extremely fresh, and apprentices spend years just learning how to making the vinegared rice for sushi correctly.
Additionally, a career-long learning experience for all apprentices and beginning sushi chefs is the skill of selecting the fish/seafood at the local wholesale fish market. This skill is largely overlooked and little known by those outside of the trade. The very important morning selection largely determines the overall quality and dining experience for the shop's customers that day.
There is enough arcane sushi terminology to fill entire books, but the most common types are:
- nigiri — the canonical sushi form consisting of rice with fish pressed on top
- maki — fish and rice rolled up in nori seaweed and cut into bite-size chunks
- temaki — fish and rice rolled up in a big cone of nori
- gunkan — "battleship" sushi, like nigiri but with nori wrapped around the edge to contain the contents
- chirashi — a large bowl of vinegared rice with seafood scattered on top
Nearly anything that swims or lurks in the sea can and has been turned into sushi, and most sushi restaurants keep a handy multilingual decoding key on hand or on the wall. A few species more or less guaranteed to feature in every restaurant are maguro (tuna), sake (salmon), ika (squid), tako (octopus), and tamago (egg). More exotic options include uni (sea urchin roe), toro (fatty tuna belly, very expensive) and shirako (fish sperm).
If you somehow ended up in a sushi restaurant, but can't or don't want to eat raw fish, there are usually several alternatives. For instance the above mentioned tamago, various vegetables on rice, or the very tasty inari (rice in a sweet wrap of deep fried tofu).
Even in Japanese, sushi is a bit of a delicacy and the most expensive restaurants, where you order piece by piece from a chef, can run you bills into ten of thousands of yen. You can limit the damage by ordering a fixed-price moriawase set, where the chef will choose whatever he thinks is good that day. Cheaper yet are the ubiquitous kaiten (lit. "revolving") sushi shops, where you sit by a conveyor belt and grab whatever strikes your fancy, at prices that can be as low as ¥100 per plate; note that, even in these places, it's quite acceptable to order directly from the chef.
When eating sushi, it's perfectly acceptable to use your fingers, just dip the piece in soy and pop it in your mouth. In Japan, the pieces will typically already have a dab of fiery wasabi radish lurking inside, but you can always add more according to your taste. Slices of pickled ginger (gari) refresh the palate and infinite refills of green tea are always available for free.
Yakiniku-style beef waiting to be grilled, Ishigaki, Okinawa
The Japanese didn't eat much meat before the Meiji era, but they have picked up the habit and even exported a few new ways to eat it since then. Keep an eye on the price though, as meat (especially beef) can be fiercely expensive and luxury varieties like the famous marbled Kobe beef can cost thousands or even tens of thousands of yen per serving. Some options, usually served by specialist restaurants, include:
- okonomiyaki — Japanese pancake-pizza, based on a wheat-cabbage batter with meat or seafood of your choice, slathered with sauce, mayo, bonito flakes, dried seaweed and pickled ginger
- teppanyaki — meat grilled on a hot iron plate
- tempura — battered shrimp, fish and vegetables deep-fried very quickly, served with a dipping broth
- tonkatsu — deep-fried pork cutlets elevated into an art form
- yakiniku — Japanese-style barbeque, cooked by yourself at your table
- yakitori — kebabs from every chicken part imaginable
One Japanese specialty worth seeking out is eel (unagi), reputed to give strength and vitality in the drainingly hot summer months. A properly grilled eel simply melts in the mouth when eaten — and takes over a thousand yen from your wallet in the process.
Stewed dishes
Particularly in the cold winter months various stews (nabe) are popular ways to warm up. Common types include:
- chankonabe — a hotchpotch hotpot much favored by sumo wrestlers
- oden — fish soup simmered for days on end, often sold on the street (and convenience stores) in the winter
- sukiyaki — a hotpot of beef, tofu, noodles and more, often somewhat sweet
- shabu-shabu — much the same, but with a savoury broth and dipping sauces
Pseudo-Western dishes
Throughout Japan you can find cafes and restaurants serving Western food ( yōshoku), ranging from molecular-level carbon copies of famous French pastries to hardly recognizable Japanized dishes like corn-and-potato pizza and spaghetti omelettes. A few popular only-in-Japan dishes include:
- hambaagu — not to be confused with the McDonalds-style hambaagaa, this is a standalone hamburger patty with fixings.
- omuraisu — rice wrapped in an omelette with a complimentary dollop of ketchup.
- wafū suteeki — steak served Japanese-style with soy.
- korokke; croquettes, usually filled with potato, along with some meat and onion.
- kare; Japanese-style curry, it is not as spicy as Indian curry
Beer gardens
During the summer months (when it is not raining) many buildings and hotels have restaurants on their rooftops which serve dishes like fried chicken and french fries, as well as light snacks. The specialty though is of course draft beer, and you can order large mugs of it or pay a fixed price for all you can drink.
Fast food
Japanese fast food restaurants offer decent quality at reasonable prices. Some chains to look out for:
- Yoshinoya, Matsuya, and Sukiya are gyūdon (beef bowl) specialists. All have been hit hard by the recent BSE scare, and have switched much of their menus to pork.
- Tenya, the best tempura you'll ever eat for less than ¥500
- Most Burger seems like just another fast food chain, but actually has a pretty interesting menu — for hamburgers with a twist, how about grilled eel between two rice buns? Notice also the list of local produce suppliers posted in each shop.
- Freshness Burger tries to be a bit less fast-foody and more like an "all-American" joint. The food's decent, but just be prepared for the tiniest burgers you've ever seen.
- Beckers Operated by JR, these fastfood burger restaurants are often found in and near JR stations in greater Tokyo and Yokohama. Beckers offers made to order burgers and Menchi burgers (minced black pork). Unlike most shops, their buns are fresh and baked inside the stores. Unused buns are thrown away if not used 1.5 hours after baking them. Their Pork Teriyaki burger is awesome. They also offer Poutine, which is of course a French Canadian snack. French fries with cheese. The chilli topping needs to be tried. More often then not, you can pay with the JR Suica pre-paid re-chargeable multi use traincard. The other domestic burger chains should probably just be skipped.
- Ooto-ya is really too good to call fast food, with a menu and atmosphere that matches any "home-style" Japanese restaurant. While there are illustrated menus on signboards, ordering can be confusing: at some stores you order at the counter before taking a seat, while at others servers come to your table.
American fast food chains are also ubiquitous, including McDonald's, Wendy's, and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
There are also a number of Japanese "family restaurants", serving a wide variety of dishes, including steak, pasta, Chinese style dishes, sandwiches, and other foods. Though their food is relatively uninteresting, these restaurants usually have illustrated menus, so travelers who cannot read Japanese can use the photos to choose and communicate their orders. Some chains across the country are:
- Jonathan's is probably the most ubiquitous local chain and vies with Denny's. Skylark is owned by the same company and much the same.
- Royal Host - tries to market itself as a bit up-scale
- Sunday Sun - reasonable, decent food and menus
- Volks - owned by Daiei, and with a large salad bar
Coffee shops
Though Starbucks has planted its flag in Japan almost as well as in the United States, the Japanese kissaten has a long history. If you're really looking for a jolt of caffeine, go to Starbucks or one of its Japanese predecessors such as Doutor. But if you're trying to get out of the rain, the heat or the crowds for a while, the kissaten is an oasis in an urban jungle. Most coffee shops are one-of-a-kind affairs, and reflect the tastes of their clientele. In a Ginza coffee shop, you'll find a soft "European" decor and sweet pastries for upscale shoppers taking a load off their Ferragamos. In an Otemachi coffee shop, businessmen in suits huddle over the low tables before meeting their clients. In Roppongi's all-night coffee shops, the night owls pause between clubs, or doze until the trains start running again in the morning.
A peculiar kind of kissaten is the jazz kissa, or jazz coffee shop. These are even darker and more smoke-filled than normal kissaten, and frequented by extremely serious-looking jazz buffs who sit motionless and alone, soaking in the bebop played at high volumes from giant audio speakers. You go to a jazz kissa to listen; conversation is a no-no.
Another offshoot is the danwashitsu (or lounge). The appearance is indistinguishable from a pricy kissaten, but the purpose is more specific: serious discussions over matters such as business or meeting prospective spouses. All tables are in separate booths, reservations are usually required, and the drinks are pricey. So don't wander into one if you're just looking for a cup of coffee.
Convenience stores
If you're travelling on the cheap, Japan's numerous convenience stores (konbini) can be a great place to grab a bite to eat, and they're almost always open 24-7. Major chains include 7-11, Lawson, and Family Mart. You can find instant noodles, sandwiches, meat buns, and even some small prepared meals, which can be heated up in a microwave right in the store. An excellent option for food on the go is onigiri (or omusubi), which is a large ball of rice stuffed with (say) fish or pickled plum and wrapped in seaweed, and usually cost around ¥100 each.
One little known fact about 7-Eleven is that they have not outsourced their food preparation and everything served in the store is prepared by 7-Eleven and delivered to stores directly from 7-Eleven food preparation facilities.
Eating vegetarian
Despite its image as light and healthy cuisine, everyday Japanese food can be quite heavy in salt and fat, with deep-fried meat or seafood being prominent. Vegetarians (much less vegans) may have difficulty finding a meal that does not include animal products to some degree, particularly as the near-ubiquitous Japanese soup stock dashi is usually prepared with bonito.
An excellent option is the kaiten sushi shop. Westerners tend to associate sushi with fish, but there are several kinds of rolled sushi available in these shops that does not include fish or other marine creatures: kappa maki (cucumber rolls), nattō maki (sushi filled with stringy fermented soy beans, an acquired taste for many), kanpyō maki (pickled-gourd rolls), and, occasionally, yuba sushi (made with the delicate, tasty 'skin' of tofu). These types of sushi tend to be less popular than the sushi using marine animal products, so you may not see them revolving in front of your eyes on the conveyor belt. Just shout out the name of the type of sushi you want and the sushi chef will prepare it for you right away. When you are ready to leave, call the waitress over and she'll count your plates. The vegetarian sushi options are always inexpensive. Whether eating vegetarian (or otherwise), kaiten sushi shops offer good value and are lots of fun.
While considerably harder to find, it's worth looking out for a restaurant (often run by temples) that offers shōjin ryori, the purely vegetarian cuisine developed by Buddhist monks. This cuisine is highly regarded, and thus commands astronomical prices.
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