I was really looking forward to eating in Japan, because what I know from Prague or Singapore fascinated me a lot. I considered Japanese cuisine to be top of the line and my visit to Japan not only confirmed that, but exceeded my expectations. Moreover, Japanese dining, the way restaurants operate, which is a bit different from what we are used to in Europe, adds to the experience. It’s hard for me to leave Japanese food, because nowhere will it be the same as here. I don’t understand how they do it, but every single meal here was top notch, whether we were picking carefully renowned restaurants or popping into a random stall along the way.
Typical Japanese dishes
Japanese food is simple to look at, but elaborate in details. Often, the quality of the ingredients themselves is a great asset, and they are not complicated to prepare and sometimes not even prepared. The dishes are not complicated even by foodstyling, but they always automatically look beautiful.
Ramen
Of all the dishes I’ve tasted in Japan, I’ve had ramen the most times. Almost every day. Sometimes maybe twice. It’s a very comfort food that comes in many different variations and always tastes great.
Ramen has its origins in Chinese noodle soup and only came to Japan in the late 19th century, probably via the port of Yokohama, where Chinese workers cooked noodles in meat broth.
The base of the ramen is the broth, which gives the whole dish its flavor. The broth can be chicken, pork, fish, mix and sometimes you can even see vegan, but that’s more modern. There are 4 basic types of ramen, depending on the flavor of the broth:
- Shoyu – the most common and traditional, clear darker broth flavored with soy sauce (shoyu).
- Shio – clear, light and mild broth flavoured mainly with salt.
- Miso – broth flavored with fermented miso soybean paste. It is thicker and stronger, often with butter.
- Tonkotsu – a thicker, creamy, cloudy broth made from pork bones.
The broth is seasoned with a thick concentrated tare sauce, which is usually put into the bowl before pouring the broth.
Noodles and seasoned broth is already a basic version of ramen, but then other things are added. Typically, slices of meat (pork belly – chochsu, which is still grilled or gun seared), a marinated boiled egg (halved or whole), nori seaweed, scallions, lemon grass, sprouts, mushrooms, butter, etc.
Other seasonings are then available on the table, such as hot chili sauce or yuzu.
Tsukumen ramen
A special chapter and my hot favourite is tsukumen ramen. The noodles and broth are served separately here, which is handy if you don’t want to eat hot noodles (the classic ramen is served boiled and the noodles are practically impossible to “eat immediately”).
Tsukumen has a thicker , more concentrated sauce (it is no longer a broth, but rather a really almost sauce), and the chili is very strong. The noodles are cold in the bowl next to it and you dip them in the sauce before each bite. The other side dishes (meat and eggs) are sometimes in the bowl with the sauce, sometimes in the bowl with the noodles.
It’s common to order rice to finish the sauce, and some places offer to top up the sauce and drink (or taste) the standard broth.
Regional style ramen
Shoulders also vary quite a bit by region.
- Sapporo ramen (Hokkaido) – the base is miso, thicker and wavy noodles, has a “winter” character (thicker, greasy), corn, butter, minced meat are added. Typical are vegetables which are roasted in a wok (adds a smoky tone).
- Hakata ramen (Kyushu) – the base is tonkotsu and ultra-thin straight noodles (cooked for a few seconds), minimalist and intense, focused on broth. Typical is the addition of another serving of noodles (kaedama).
- Toyko ramen (Tokyo) – the base is shoyu and medium, wavy noodles, chicken broth, a small amount of pork and fish dashi. Menma (fermented bamboo), nori seaweed, chaschu (slice of roasted pork), spring onions are added. It’s kind of the archetype of classic Japanese ramen.
- Kitakata ramen (Fukushima) – shoyu base but lighter and milder than Tokyo, pork bone broth and fish, thick, wide wavy noodles, lighter, cleaner taste. This ramen is very much about noodles.
- Kumamoto ramen (Kyushu) – the base is tonkotsu, but softer than Hakata, the noodles are slightly thicker, mayu (black, slightly burnt garlic oil) is added, so the garlic flavour dominates.
- Yokohama lekei ramen (Yokohama) – the base is a mix of shoyu + tonkotsu and thick straight noodles, spinach and a large piece of nori seaweed are added. It’s thick, salty, quite different from the others.
Ramen restaurant
Typically, one place has one type of broth, sometimes in versions of classic and tsukumen, sometimes just one of them. In ramen restaurants, seating right at the bar is common. Food here is very often ordered at a machine with buttons for individual menu items, and paid into the machine in cash. The more modern ones have a touch screen with nice photos of the food and card payment.
Often you will be given a disposable bib. Sipping a ramen is socially acceptable to desirable, it expresses contentment.
Wagyu and Kobe
It may not be something that Japanese people eat every day, but it’s definitely something that our people might want to be among the first to try. Or at least I would. Wagyu is Japanese beef cattle, a breed with extreme marbling of the meat.
The essential features of wagyu are just the extreme intramuscular fat that makes the white marbling, the fat is low melting (melts around 30-32°C), the taste is very strong, sometimes even sweet, the texture is soft like butter by the way the fat is interspersed evenly between the muscles.
Beef is graded on yield (A, B, C – A is the most usable meat per cut) and quality (marbling, meat colour, muscle texture and quality, fat colour and quality). The highest is 5, wagyu is generally 3-5. Then there is a beef marbling score (BMS) on a scale of 1-12, with A5 wagyu often meaning a BMS of 10-12 (i.e. extreme marbling).
Kobe
Kobe is a subgroup of wagyu, it is not a breed, it is a protected mark. It has to meet all the criteria to be a Kobe. That is: a Tajima-gyu breed, born, raised and slaughtered in Hyogo Prefecture (where Kobe is), must be certified by the Kobe Beef Marketing Board, grade A4 or A5, BMS minimum 6, fit within a limited weight range and have purple chrysanthemum seals and a certificate.
Kobe is therefore extremely rare and therefore expensive (about six times more expensive than “ordinary wagyu”) and outside Japan probably most of the meat sold as kobe is not kobe at all, it is “just” wagyu.
Kobe usually has a finer texture, even more even marbling, but the average person tends not to be able to tell Kobe from A5 wagyu.
Regional wagyu
The Japanese are more concerned with prefectures, not Kobe marketing, so those brands may even be better than Kobe, just not as famous:
- Miyazaki beef – used a lot in top restaurants, won several competitions around the world,
- Matsusaka beef – extreme marbling, the most expensive,
- Omi beef – very mild, milder taste,
- Hida beef – complex taste, high standard,
- Kagoshima wagyu – stable quality, lots of exports.
Sushi
Sour rice (flavoured with vinegar), usually combined with raw fish or seafood. As it happens, sushi has many varieties:
- nigiri – a roll with a slice of fish on top, without seaweed (I found this to be the most common in Japan)
- maki – rice rolls wrapped in nori seaweed,
- uramaki – rather western variant (sushi inside out), rice is outside, seaweed inside
- temaki – seaweed cones filled with rice and filling,
- gunkan – “boats” made of rice wrapped with nori seaweed and ingredients on top.
Sushi includes soy sauce and wasabi. Pickled ginger is used to intersperse between bites and cleanse the taste.
For me the novelty, which I liked immediately, was wagyu sushi – a roll of rice with a thin slice of lightly grilled (with a flambé gun mostly) wagyu. Great goodness!
Sashimi
Raw slices of high quality fresh fish. A pure form of enjoying fish. Usually accompanied by wasabi, shiso leaf and soy sauce.
Typical sashimi is made of tuna, salmon, halibut, octopus or even shrimp.
Tonkatsu
Fried pork schnitzel. I like steaks in general, so no surprise that this one did too. The chop or even the tenderloin is coated in panko breadcrumbs and fried. The schnitzel is served cut into strips (so that it can be eaten with chopsticks). With finely shredded cabbage, thick sweet and salty tonkatsu sauce. Traditionally, miso soup and rice are served alongside. In addition to this, the restaurant may offer other condiments and sauces, such as mustard or sesame.
The origin of tonkatsu is, of course, Western, but the Japanese have grown so fond of it that it has become completely domesticated.
Also based on tonkatsu is katsudon (a bowl of rice with chopped steak covered in egg) and miso-katsu, a regional dish from Nagoya (tonkatsu with red miso sauce).
Gyukatsu
Gyukatsu is a kind of upgraded tonkatsu class. It might seem almost similar, but the differences are significant. First of all, gyukatsu is made of beef and coated in a finer panko breadcrumb. It’s only fried quickly, and when sliced, it’s rare inside. And that’s where the fun begins, because it’s up to you to finish it to taste.
The technique is called ishiyaki (grilling on a hot stone) and is done directly on the konro table (a hot stone with a flame underneath). Each guest has their own.
Gyukatsu also includes finely shredded cabbage, sauce, Japanese bamboo salad (potatoes, kewpie mayonnaise, sometimes cucumber, carrot or onion. And of course rice and miso soup.
Okonomiyaki
Okonomiyaki is still a bit of a mystery to me. I’ve had it a few times and each time it was something completely different. Maybe because okonomiyaki literally means“grill whatever you want“. Anyway, the base is a dough of flour, water and eggs to which cabbage and other ingredients are added. My first okonomiyaki was more or less a pure cabbage pancake, my last one was a very eggy pancake.
In addition to cabbage, it is usually filled with pieces of meat, seafood, cheese or vegetables. It varies a lot regionally, for example in Osaka they add noodles.
After baking, the dish is usually covered with a sweet and salty sauce that is a bit like Worcestershire sauce and Japanese mayonnaise made from egg yolks and rice vinegar, and topped with katsuobushi (dried fish flakes) and aonori (seaweed).
Okonomiyaki is often prepared right in front of you on a hot stove, so it can be an experience too.
Gyoza
Japanese dumplings taken from Chinese jiaozi. The filling is mostly minced pork, ginger, garlic, spring onion and cabbage. The Japanese mainly deal with texture: thin dough, juicy filling and the contrast of crispness. They are eaten with a simple sauce of soy sauce, vinegar and a few drops of chili oil.
Basically, there are 3 types of gyoza dumplings:
- Yaki-gyoza – classic, fried from the bottom, then covered with water and steamed, they are then nice and crispy and soft at the same time,
- Sui-gyoza – cooked in water or broth, soft, tender but not crispy,
- Age-gyoza – deep-fried, whole crispy, a bit more tasty and greasy, more of a beer dish.
Tempura
Ingredients coated in batter and fried until crispy are nothing new in Asia. But Japanese tempura is characterised by its light batter. Low-gluten flour, ice water, and sometimes egg yolk are used. And no spices. It’s fried at around 170-180°C (less will soak up too much oil, more will harden it).
It is used to wrap anything, most often shrimp, fish, sweet potatoes, squash, mushrooms, eggplant or shiso leaves. Each piece of tempura is served with tentsuyu sauce, which is a mixture of soy sauce, mirin and dashi broth. It is lightly salty and umami.
Shabu-shabu
Shabu-shabu is a Japanese hotpot built on quality meat. Unlike Chinese, it starts with pure boiling water (or kombu dashi) on the stove top. Into this, thin slices of beef are soaked for a few seconds. The name shabu-shabu comes from the sound the meat makes when you “rinse” it with the broth.
In addition, vegetables, eggplant, napa, tofu, mushrooms, shirataki noodles are continuously added to the broth. The meat is then dipped in sauces – ponzu (citrus and soy) or goma dare (sesame).
It’s purely about the taste of the raw material, the broth doesn’t have much taste (as a soup you can’t eat it at all) and I found it much more boring compared to the Chinese hotpot. But good meat is good meat.
Yakiniku – Japanese BBQ
A small grill right on the table where you grill the meat yourself, so great fun. They’ll prepare the meat for you cut into small pieces (kind of like one-pieces), it’s always for a few seconds, we always put it on there in one or two pieces. The meat is typically beef, at best straight waygu.
The meat is not very spicy, either just salted or lightly marinated in tare. After grilling, it is dipped in tare or ponzu sauce. You can order maybe rice with it or just eat the meat with the meat.
Onigiri
Rice triangles or rounds wrapped with or without nori seaweed (shio-onigiri), stuffed with a variety of things, traditionally: umeboshi (pickled plum), sake (grilled salmon), tuna-mayo, okaka (tuna bonito + soybean), tarako (cod roe), red beans.
It’s a compact meal ideal as a snack on the go. Apart from markets, you can normally buy it in shops in lots of variations, individually wrapped.
Unagi
Freshwater eel. It has almost cult status in Japan, both because of the taste and because of how difficult it is to prepare well. And it’s also one of the more expensive ingredients. The meat is tender, almost falling apart, the skin is crispy and soaked in tare sauce, the flavour is smoky.
The eel is prepared by cutting it lengthwise, removing the bones and grilling it over coals for a long time. It is soaked several times in tare to give it a dark sheen. The seasoning varies regionally:
- Kanto (Tokyo) – eel is steamed first, then grilled → it is lighter, softer.
- Kansai (Osaka) – straight on the fire, no steaming → it is more intense, fatter, more after the fire.
Japanese home-cooked meals / Yōshoku
Homemade and Western dishes that the Japanese have adapted over the years. These are not cultural symbols like sushi or ramen, but the dishes that are eaten most often in Japan – in dining rooms, bistros, family restaurants and at home. They are simple, convenient, easy to understand and, above all, extremely popular. Simply what the Japanese really eat beyond the famous specialties.
Hambagu don
Hambagu don is rice with Japanese hamburger patty. Mixture of beef and pork, onion, salt, pepper, a little panko breadcrumbs, moist, juicy.
The burger is fried, sometimes covered with demi-glace or wafu sauce (soy sauce, mirin, broth).
In the donburi version, it is put directly on rice, often with a raw egg yolk or onsen tamago (egg cooked at a very low temperature). The taste is meaty, very umami, slightly sweet.
Teriyaki
Certainly one of the world’s most popular Japanese dishes, paradoxically not so much to be seen in Japan. Or like this, it’s not so much seen in restaurants, the Japanese take it more as a home dish or more as a cooking technique than a specialty.
Teriyaki is more of a technique than a specific food. It’s about creating a glaze that makes a shiny caramelized film on the surface. Teri means to shine, yaki means to grill, to roast.
The basic sauce consists of soy sauce, mirin, sugar and sometimes a little sake. In Japan they make the sauce noticeably thinner than how it bubbled over to us in the west.
Chicken (tori teriyaki) is the most commonly used, but also salmon, tofu or less traditionally pork.
Karaage
Japanese fried chicken. The base is pieces of chicken thigh and marinade (soy sauce, ginger, garlic, mirin, sake). Coated in a mixture of flour and potato starch (katakuriko), the crust is thin and crispy. It is fried twice: the first time the meat is cooked, the second time the crust is made.
It’s both streetfood (karaage cup), as well as common in pubs (iazakaya), lunch sets and bento boxes, home-cooked food and the typical apertizer in ramen restaurants.
Japanese curry
A thick sauce made from butternut squash, onions, carrots, potatoes and spice mix. The word “curry” here is slightly confusing and has nothing to do with Indian or Thai curry.
The default version is this sauce with rice. It’s such a student (cheap food) that’s eaten really often, but hasn’t made it much beyond the border. The upgraded version and probably the most common is katsu curry, which is steak (tonkatsu) with rice and this curry sauce. But it can be with beef, chicken, vegetables or curry udon (curry broth with udon noodles).
Japanese streetfood and izakaya dishes
What amuses me about Japan is their popularity of plastic dummy food. You’ll commonly see this outside restaurants, a few elaborate plates on display exactly as per the menu, just made of plastic. What’s even funnier is that they work with this at streetfood too and the dummies are really true to life, more than once I’ve been lured by trays full of wagyu sushi, just not at all.
Japanese streetfood pretty much retains the culture of dining out, and it’s not necessarily a cheap way to eat, as even wagyu and kobe skewers are street food.
Yakitori
Perhaps every country in Asia has its own chicken skewers, so in Japan they are called yakitori (literally “grilled chicken”). They are grilled on an open fire and various parts of the chicken are skewered on skewers, even the liver or hearts.
Yakitori is dipped in tare sauce (a mixture of soy sauce, mirin, sugar and sake), which gives the meat that sweet and salty taste.
Takoyaki
Balls of thinner dough. Inside is a piece of octopus, spring onion, thin slices of ginger and crispy pieces of tempura. They’re soft and creamy inside, not meant to be fully cooked through.
They are baked quickly, turned with a skewer in semicircular cast-iron moulds.
On top is takoyaki sauce (something between worcestershire and tonkatsu sauce), Japanese mayonnaise, aonori (seaweed) and katsuobushi (dried, fermented and encased bonito tuna flakes).
Motsuni
It is a typical iazakaya dish, often at stalls around the markets. It’s a stew of tripe, a little bowl of soup. (It’s not main course size, just one of the smaller dishes or a dish to go with the beer). Pork tripe is mainly used, sometimes beef.
The tripe is simmered for a long time with miso, soy, mirin, sake and ginger. A thick to gel broth is created, the meat is tender, and spring onions (negi) are added on top.
Oden
Japanese winter comfort food. It is a mixture of various ingredients slowly pulled in a light dashi broth. It’s a cross between soup and hotpot, more subtle in flavor. In Japan, it’s sold everywhere, in shadows, konbini, izakaya, winter festivals.
The ingredients are left to soak for a long time in a broth of dashi, soy and mirin. The longer they are in the broth, the better. Typical ingredients are: daikon (Japanese white radish), hanpen (fish cake), chikuwa (fish paste tube), konjac (flexible gelatinous noodles with almost no taste that soak up the broth), tofu, egg, satsuma-age (fried fish meatballs), gyusuji (beef tendon on a stick), ganmodoki (tofu dumpling).
Japanese sweets and desserts
Like the rest of the food, the desserts are simple and focus mainly on texture and precision of processing. They are not too much about sugar, they are not over-sweetened. They often combine subtle flavours, tea, beans, milk, fruit.
Mochi and daifuku
For a lot of people, mochi is a thing that you only have to taste once and it remains just such sweet sticky balls with no taste. Of course, there’s something to that. But the stuffed mochi, daifuku, won me over because the filling adds what the dumpling itself may be lacking a little – flavor.
Mochi is a sticky rice mass that is made from mochigome rice. It is boiled and beaten thoroughly until it is a smooth, elastic mass. This is then formed into round patties or balls.
Daifuku is mochi stuffed with sweet filling. Traditionally, it is filled with a sweet paste of red anko beans, which may not be a natural sweet (and good) taste for a European either. But there are other variations with creamy fruit fillings, yuzu, chocolate cream.
Mochi and daifuku are commonly found at streetfood stalls, but also in every 7/11 and even gift shops in nice packaging.
Dorayaki and anmitsu
Dorayaki is a traditional Japanese sweet “sandwich ” – two small, fluffy pancakes joined by a filling. The filling is traditionally anko, a sweet paste made from red beans.
A modern variation is fresh creams, then it’s nama dorayaki. Typically whipped cream or matcha cream.
Imagawayaki
A hot, round, filled Japanese cookie. It comes from the Imagawa-bashi bridge in Edo (modern-day Tokyo), where it started to be sold. It’s typical street food.
It is baked in a mould that has rounds for individual imagawayaki and the top is covered and both sides are toasted and joined. Often a logo or some text is burnt on the top. The most popular filling is anko, a sweet paste made from red beans.
Souffle cheesecake
The Japanese cheesecake has probably nothing in common with the American one except the name.
It’s hugely fluffy, a batter of lots of whisked egg whites, cream cheese, egg yolks, a little flour. The taste is mild, just a little sweet. The texture is elastic, when you turn it, it shakes. I like it, it doesn’t have that strong taste of egg whites that some desserts of this kind have. It’s sold “straight from the oven” (so it’s baked in a water bath to keep it moist), still warm, best not to wait too long to eat it.
We tasted at the famous Rikuro bakery in Osaka.
Hotcakes
Hotcakes are a symbol of “retro comfort” in Japan – something that people used to have in old cafes in the 1960s to 1980s. Today, it’s back again thanks to the return of kissaten style. Kissaten are traditional Japanese cafes from the Showa era with simple food and décor.
These pancakes are perfectly flat and evenly golden all over. They are thicker, firmer, more compact and smooth, no bubbles. The batter is slightly sweet, soft, smooth. They are made slowly over low heat, just to create an even surface.
They are typically served with butter. We had them in Tokyo at the famous Butter, where you get a whole cube of butter (100g) with them, which they make there. We also got a shot of the milk they use to make the butter as a tasting, that’s how they pride themselves on the quality of the ingredients here.
Matcha desserts
Traditional Japanese sweets (wagashi) are more likely to be drunk with matcha, not that they are matcha. Matcha ice cream, matcha cheesecake, matcha pancakes, all of these are the wave of the last 20 to 30 years.
Works great with milk and fat. I’m not saying everyone will necessarily like it, I can’t even smell a matcha latte. But technically, it is. The fat pulls the umami out of the matcha, which is why matcha lattes, matcha tiramisu, and swirled matcha ice cream are so popular.
What you’re likely to encounter:
- matcha ice cream – the iconic green ice cream is intense and bittersweet. Made from medium or better culinary grade matcha, the Japanese want the taste of tea in it, not just the colour.
- matcha parfait – tall glass of layers: matcha ice cream, shiratama dumplings, azuki beans, corn flakes for texture, jelly, whipped cream.
- cheesecake / tiramisu – in general green cupcakes are very photogenic and so it’s all over Instagram, not only in Japan.
- matcha latte / matcha affogato – strong matcha with milk or matcha shot poured over a scoop of vanilla bean.
- Matcha KitKat – Japan is the king of flavoured KitKats, they have heaps of flavours including regional and seasonal, one of them is the Green Matcha Chocolate KitKat – as much as it sounds like it, this one just tasted good to me, maybe the matcha flavour isn’t there as much.
Japanese breakfast
The very traditional Japanese breakfast asa teishoku is more like a small lunch. It’s a set of rice, miso soup, grilled fish, tamagoyaki (rolled omelette), tsukemono (pickled vegetables), nori seaweed.
Modern breakfasts can be either hotcakes or thick Japanese toast from a shokupan with either egg spread, jam, honey or anko. Or tamago sando, an egg sandwich made of toasted bread with an egg omelette inside.
Japanese drinks
In any case, drinking in Japan is not just an accessory, but a separate chapter of gastronomy.
Green teas
Green teas are a staple of Japanese culture. Tea is literally drunk everywhere in Japan, both hot and cold. The most common types are:
- sencha – the most common, clean, grassy, slightly bitter,
- gyokuro – premium shaded tea, strong umami,
- matcha – powdered tea, stronger, thicker taste,
- hojicha – roasted green tea, dark, smoky, zero bitterness,
- genmaicha – green tea with roasted rice, has a “popcorn” aroma.
Oolong (between green and black tea) is also very common, but originally comes from China/Taiwan.
Matcha
While matcha desserts are the new wave, Japanese people have been drinking matcha tea for centuries.
It is a powder made from shaded tea leaves (tencha). Shading raises chlorophyll and amino acids, so matcha is greener, sweeter and has more umami than regular green tea.
Quality matcha never tastes bitter. If you smell bitterness from matcha, it’s probably cheap matcha meant for baking. The colour is also a clue to the quality, quality matcha is a bright deep green, if it is more of an olive colour it is cheap low quality matcha.
The Japanese distinguish two categories of matcha:
- ceremonial (for drinking) – sweet and velvety,
- Culinary (for desserts, lattes, baking) – in cafes it’s almost always culinary.
Japanese alcohol
The Japanese were not lazy when it came to alcohol either. First of all, there’s sake, which is a rice wine, from dry to sweet, served both cold and hot. I haven’t found it to my liking yet, it tastes like water with vodka.
Slightly more interesting is umeshu, a star dessert wine, sweet and often served on the rocks. Japanese whisky is one of the world’s top brands, Nikka or Suntory. Highball, a whisky and soda, is very popular here in the izakayas. And of course the Japanese have beer, Asahi, Sapporo, Kirin.