Intro to Japanese Food

Ramen is a Japanese noodle soup. It consists of Chinese wheat noodles served in a meat or (occasionally) fish-based broth, often flavored with soy sauce or miso, and uses toppings such as sliced pork, nori (dried seaweed), menma, and scallions. 

There are usually four main types of ramen, depending on the ingredients: Shōyu ramen Shio ramen, Miso ramen and Tonkhotsu ramen, ramen. You can find a detailed description of them here. If you are in japan you cannot miss the experience of eating in a ramen restaurants, especially those with a vending machine (called Ichiran) for ordering!

Made from buckwheat flour, Soba is a traditional noodle dish in Japan and is considered to represent Japanese cuisine along with sushi and tempura. Soba is served in a hot soup, or is cooled and served on a strainer along with dipping sauce. 

Udon instead, is a type of thick, wheat-flour noodle. It is often served hot as a noodle soup in its simplest form, as kake udon, in a mildly flavoured broth called kakejiru, which is made of dashi, soy sauce, and mirin. Yakisoba is prepared by frying ramen-style wheat noodles with bite-sized pork and finely chopped vegetables like cabbage, onions, bean sprouts and carrots. Then flavored with yakisoba sauce, salt and pepper. Sometimes udon is used as a replacement for the Chinese-style soba and called yakiudon.

Yakitori is a dish of bite-sized pieces of chicken that are skewered and roasted over a grill, typically a charcoal grill. Yakitori is commonly eaten as a snack with drinks, or as a whole meal, and is very popular in Japan given the rich and diverse flavor of the meat, and the casual dining style. For this reason most izakayas would have them. There are many different types of yakitori types, read this before ordering. I would say that this is one of my favorite things to eat in Japan (together with gyoza)! 

Tonkatsu is breaded deep-fried pork and Katsudon is a popular Japanese bowl dish with it and eggs cooked in a sweet and salty broth and placed over rice. Katsu, or "cutlet" in Japanese, refers to meat that’s been pounded thin before being cooked. Don, or donburi, identifies this as a bowl dish. In Japanese culture, katsudon is considered soul food, the symbol of a tasty warm meal that can melt even the coldest part of your heart. Katsudon is a typical lunch dish in Japan and it is available at many casual restaurants.

Gyoza are dumplings filled with ground meat and vegetables and wrapped in a thin dough. Also known as pot stickers, gyoza originated in China (where they are called jiaozi), but have become a very popular dish in Japan. The typical gyoza filling consists of ground pork, nira chives, green onion, cabbage, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and sesame oil, but some creative gyoza shops have also come up with a range of other fillings. They are often served in ramen restaurants or at specific gyoza shops and they are usually eaten with a dipping sauce made at the table of equal amounts of soy sauce and vinegar.

Japanese curry (more commonly called karē) is commonly served in four main forms: curry rice  (karē raisu, curry over rice), curry udon (curry over noodles), katsu karē (curry rice served with a breaded pork cutlet on top) and curry bread (a curry-filled pastry). It is one of the most popular dishes in Japan and it's found everywhere!

Okonomiyaki is a savory pancake containing a variety of ingredients in a wheat-flour-based batter; it is an example of konamon (flour-based Japanese cuisine) and it's particularly famous in Osaka, where we had it (they make it right in front of you, on a griddle that is usually in the center of the table), but there is also a Hiroshima version that is very popular. You can read about it here.

Sukiyaki is a dish that is prepared and served in the nabemono (Japanese hot pot) style. It consists of meat (usually thinly sliced beef) which is slowly cooked or simmered at the table, alongside vegetables and other ingredients, in a shallow iron pot in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. The ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of raw, beaten eggs after being cooked in the pot, and then eaten. We were introduced to this fantastic dish by our dear Japanese friend Tamako and her brother, who took us to a wonderful sukiyaki restaurant in Asakusa in Tokyo!

Kamameshi literally translates to "kettle rice" and is a traditional rice dish cooked in an iron pot called a kama. Later, similar to takikomi gohan, kamameshi came to refer to a type of Japanese pilaf cooked with various types of meat, seafood, and vegetables, and flavored with soy sauce, sake, or mirin. We discovered this with Tamako as well, in a cute little restaurant in Nippori, Tokyo.

Korokke is a delicious fried food made from panko-crumbed mashed potato with carrot, onion, and mince. In Japan, these are tasty street food (we ate them in Ueno Park, with Tamako!) but are also one of those Japanese home-style dishes that can easily be made from scratch.

Japanese people are very into sweets and there are many different traditional treats, the most famous of them probably being the dorayaki -that are mainly made with mochi and red bean paste, azuki, that you will at first confuse with chocolate- but many other cakes and pastry as well! This section is too big and I don't know enough about it (besides eating them) so I direct you here. My favorite sweets to eat there in the morning were Castella cakes, a fluffly sponge cake original from Nagasaki.

I also don't know enough about all the wonderful varieties of Japanese tea, so I direct you here. We were lucky to be taken to an old traditional Tea shop in Ueno by Tamako and it was incredible, especially with the added experience of tasting Wagashi (gelatine sweets). You may also want to learn something about the Tea Ceremony, which is an incredible experience to have while in Japan (we only had one taste of it the first time we went to Japan in 1999).