10 Must-Eat Foods in Japan

Japanese cuisine: what to try to feel the spirit of the country

By Zallee Pepper, OzzyHopper

Japanese cuisine is exotic and with a huge variety, promising so many exciting discoveries when you travel to this unique culture - and completely different to other cuisines such as Egyptian, Moroccan, Spanish or Italian. It is much broader than what you can access in the local restaurant at home. Experience the spirit at the heart of Japan and take your tastebuds for a culinary adventure, explore some of its amazing delights in 10 restaurant encounters.

A traditional Japanese meal consists of a steaming bowl of short grain rice as a kind of palate cleanser between mouthfuls, miso soup and pickles. But it is the side dishes that tantalise. It has been classified as an almost perfect cuisine. Even today Japan still has one of the highest average life expectancies in the world.

A typical traditional meal will always have rice, soup (usually miso soup), and pickles, plus side dishes. This one has some grilled fish and simmered vegetables. ‘Family restaurants’ will have these. Most places you choose your dish, and have it as a ‘setto’ (set) which means rice, miso soup and pickles are added.

The flavours are typically differing balances of:

·       Soy sauce – Kikkoman is lighter than the Chinese varieties, and even brewed in a differently. Chinese soy sauce is too heavy and salty for Japanese food, and overpowers it.

·       Dashi – a fish stock

·       Mirin and cooking sake – sweet fermented rice wines

·       Sugar

·       Sesame

Each person eats from their own set of dishes, not communally shared like in China. From a range of seafood and vegetables, with a little pork, chicken and meat, Japanese meals aren’t designed by the type of meat, but by the method of cooking – whether simmered, fried, steamed, grilled or cut. A meal is a balance of these.

What’s more, Japan makes food ordering for the foreigner very easy. Wander down any of the food streets and you have endless windows of plastic food models – such as chopsticks suspended on top of some noodles above a bowl. It is the home of the plastic food models. In other countries we may resort to finger pointing – I like what he’s having, I’ll have one. In Japan you can view the complete menu in plastic models in the restaurant window, or a fully illustrated menu inside.

There are so many different options which are an exciting and mouth-watering adventure! Let’s check out some of the different types of fun restaurants you could visit for a true adventure into the spirit of Japanese food.

10 Types of Japanese Restaurant to Try

1 Sushi

Sushi is now available everywhere. But to quote an inspiring book of anecdotes, “It’s Not all Raw Fish”.

Sushi, with maki rolls at the top.

Sushi is the mini bed of rice topped with raw and cooked seafoods, egg, avocado, vegetables, and sesame, all in one mouth-sized package. Or there is the maki, or rolls which are wrapped in nori seaweed. The rice is flavoured with vinegar, salt and sugar, and served with soy sauce, wasabi horse radish, and pink pickled ginger, and everything is fresh.

Visit a sushi train, where you sit at a bar and choose your dishes as they go past on a loop constantly fed by the sushi chefs. Refill your own tea from a tap on the bench in front of you. At the end, the number of dishes in your stack of empties are counted for your bill, with each plate colour being a different price.

2 Sashimi

Sashimi is not sushi. Slices of raw fish are served up on platters, or sometimes in a boat. As a first timer, the texture of raw fish can be disconcerting. But if you can move past the texture, raw fish has a delicate and delicious flavour, with each type of fish having its unique qualities and tastes. Mix the green wasabi as you like into your soy sauce for dipping. But watch out – too much is perfect for clearing out a cold!

The leaves are shiso, as different in taste as coriander or mint is from oregano. Try it - I love them in maki rolls to spring the flavours. The orange balls are salmon roe, a delicious burst of oil in your mouth to add to the textures in mouth sensatons.

For the more adventurous, there are even the exotic blowfish restaurants. It is sliced so paper thin it is see-through, and extremely delicate in its flavour. The poisonous parts are connected with the liver – a lure for some of the rich and famous. Don’t worry – the rest is safe to eat. But what a story to take home – that you have eaten the poisonous blowfish. Friends don’t need to know the details! .

For an even more exotic experience, seek out a Nyotaimori restaurant. Nyotaimori means “the art of eating sushi or sashimi from the body of a naked woman”.

3 Ramen and Noodles

Noodles are also an immensely popular dish in Japan. Every chef has their own unique soup, with toppings of your choice, including ebi frai (crumbed giant shrimp) or shrimp in the light and crispy tempura batter (nothing like the normal crumbing that is typically called “tempura batter” everywhere that I’ve seen outside Japan), and kamaboko (a pink and white seafood ‘cake’ which looks like a flower). Just remember your noodle etiquette – you must slurp! This tells the host that you are enjoying their food. And it has the added advantage of cooling them a little on the way to your mouth!

Ramen is a version of Chinese noodles. There are ramen noodle shops everywhere, including in the train stations, where they are often bars where you stand, slurp, and then run for your train.

Ramen

I also love the hiyashi chuuka, a chilled version without soup - a summer treat.

Soba are the buckwheat noodles. Yakisoba is a delicious stir-fried noodle, but my favourite is a summer dish called zarusoba. It is simple, and incredibly tasty. Your soba noodles come on a bamboo mat with a dipping sauce at the side, to which you add the grated daikon radish and ginger.

Zarusoba

Udon are the thick white noodles, springy in texture. My favourite is a winter one-pot dish cooked and served in the same pot called a nabe – Nabeyaki Udon. Toppings can include a variety of vegetables, seafood, meat. Dip your noodles into the soft egg yolk before popping them into your mouth for a spin on the flavour of the soup.

Nabeyaki Udon

Somen are the fine white noodles, especially worth hunting down in the summer. You can get Nagashi Somen bars , especially in the south, like the sushi train, except with channels of running iced water which flow around the bar. Sit at the bar and have some fun trying to catch the noodles with your chopsticks as they rush past, then dip them in the sauce. (Not as hard as it sounds - just holding your chopsticks in the water will catch them)

Shirataki noodles are the thin semi see-through ones used in dishes like sukiyaki.

4 Yakitori

For a treat and a completely Japanese experience, visit a yakitori bar. This is the heart of the spirit of Japanese food. They are mostly little. You sit on stools at a bar and point to your food for them to cook it. The menu – grilled kebab sticks of every kind of meat. The meat is basted with a slightly sweet soy marinade which gives it its unique flavour. Be sure to try some local Japanese beer such as Suntory, Asahi or Kirin, or maybe some hot sake (rice wine).

Yakitori

5 Okonomiyaki

Literally meaning ‘cooked as you like’, these restaurants come with a grilling plate in the middle of your table. In front of you an egg is mixed into a bowl of flour, then lots of cabbage, and vegetables and meat of your choice. It is tipped onto the griddle on the table. In English it might be called a savoury pancake, but it is similar in shape only. Flipped and grilled, brushed with okonomiyaki sauce and nori flakes, in many places the customers have the fun of mixing and cooking it themselves.

Okonomiyaki

Yakisoba on your own personal table with a grill at an okonomiyaki restaurant.

6 Kareraisu

Curry Rice is an all-time favourite comfort food. The Japanese curry isn’t very hot, but definitely delicious and always a good and tasty filler. It is very saucy, and usually with pork and vegetables and served with rice and some pickled onions or pink ginger. This is a tasty favourite that is found everywhere.

Kare Raisu, often with bright pink pickled ginger or small pickled onions. Kare katsu is the same with a a crumbled cutlet.

7 Donburi

These are classic rice dishes topped with a soft egg and meat or fish combination. Classic favourites include Katsudon with a tasty crumbed cutlet, ebi frai with the crumbed giant shrimp, tempuradon, oyakodon with chickan and egg, tendon with tempura, and unadon in summer with a very, very tasty version of grilled eel and marinade.

Katsudon with pork cutlet

Oyakodon - egg and chicken

 8 Obento

Passing through train stations, check out the obento lunch boxes. Tidbits are arranged into little boxed sections – rice of course, but then there can be ebi fry, katsu cutlets, vegetables simmered in sauces, sweet egg roll, edamame beans – sweet, savoury, but every morsel a little taste adventure. Explore the tasty morsels, perhaps as the shinkansen bullet train whizzes past Mt Fuji.

An ekiben - station obento lunchbox. There is a really serious problem when it comes to choosing which one - any sizeable station has dozens of tasty looking choices.

Some more elaborate versions from a fancier restaurant.

9 Parfait

Do you enjoy the sweet treat? Check out those amazing ice-cream parfait’s in the café windows! Try the excellent baked cheesecake. For more traditional, taste the mochi with its sweet anko bean treat wrapped in rice paste. Japanese cakes are very sweet, but the perfect balance to the bitter tea if you have the chance for a traditional tea ceremony – truly the essence of the Japanese spirit.

Kissaten window - cafes with exotic looking parfait glasses, baked cheesecakes, pancakes…

10 Izakaya

Spot the izakaya by the red lanterns which hang out the front – the Japanese “pub”. Dishes are small and tasty to share like tapas. Favourites include kara’age crispy fried chicken (that’s the main way you’d have your chicken at an izakaya!), gyoza dumplings, vegetables with sesame dressing, edamame beans, skewers of grilled yakitori meat, light and crispy tempura, cooked fish, and sashimi… a little bit of everything. Try a highsour – spirits with soda. My favourite is ume haisawa, made from the sour Japanese plums.

An Izakaya is the perfect way to top off your adventure into the spirit of Japanese cuisine!

The red lanterns announcing the various izakaya in a street.