Japanese cuisine holds a special place in our hearts (and stomachs). Only a couple other countries have wowed us like Japan. While it is hard to miss the attention-to-detail and perfection of seemingly simple foods like sushi rice and soba noodles, the most impressive aspect of Japanese cuisine is the variety. We spent six weeks in Tokyo and never tired of the food there. We also loved the food in Thailand, but we can see how some people may not be as fond of it because of the unusual flavor combinations and level of spice. However, Japanese cuisine is so diverse that I feel like there is definitely something for everybody in this country. And for us, we love it all!
Here is our take on the top foods to eat while in Japan:
1) Sushi
Okay, so I have to start with the most obvious and famous food from Japan. Although sushi is now available worldwide, the Japanese perfected the art, and no one quite does it like they do. I will admit that I am a huge fan of “Americanized” sushi. I love sushi rolls filled with avocado, cream cheese, deep-fried, you name it. But, that isn’t how the Japanese roll (pun intended). Of all the sushi we ate, I think we only had a couple of simple rolls (called makizushi) the entire time in Japan. The most common form of sushi is nigiri. Nigiri is composed of an oblong-shaped ball of vinegared sushi rice draped with a lovely piece of raw fish and normally with a small dab of wasabi.
Depending on your budget and preference, there are many different types of places to eat sushi. Of course, there are all the neighborhood joints that will serve you a delicious platter of nigiri.
My favorite for the budget traveler is the kaiten-sushi, or conveyor belt sushi. What could be more fun than a parade of delicious sushi passing by you?!!?!
Along with all the other sushi accoutrements (ginger, chopsticks, soy sauce), I love that there is always a hot water tap on the bar for each patron for unlimited matcha tea.
The plates are color-coated to represent the price of the sushi. And you just stack up your plates to keep track of your bill.
Of course, we always pick the most expensive options. Our favorite plate was a special salmon trio of plain salmon nigiri, a blow-torch seared salmon nigiri, and then seared salmon nigiri with a special tangy mayo sauce.
We were pretty pumped at the quality of the sushi at this little shop in the Ameyoko shopping district where we took Holly and Bobby. The long line of locals was a subtle clue, and the wait was totally worth it. I think we got tour guide brownie points for this one.
The Japan sushi experience would not be complete without a special night out with one of the top sushi chefs in the country. We chose Yasuda, who is of course, one of Anthony Bourdain’s good friends.
We were very fortunate that we got a seat at his exclusive 10-person sushi bar just a few days before we left, after being on the waitlist for weeks. The popular sushi chefs can be tough to visit, especially for foreigners, but totally worth it if you can get in. The biggest difference is that each piece of sushi is presented to you one at a time. This way, the master sushi chef can make sure that the sushi is at the perfect temperature – the rice warmed gently in his hands while the fish still with a slight chill. You must eat it the moment he places the piece in front of you for the perfect experience.
We were a bit nervous because there was no menu, and he would just give you what he deemed appropriate for the flow of the meal and what fish was best in the market that day. Experiencing sushi in this unique format gave us a whole new appreciation for the art of sushi and for the flavor complexity of unagi (eel) and uni (sea urchin).
Oh, and one last mentioned of why sushi is so different in Japan. Here, apprentice sushi chefs can literally spend years learning how to master the special rice. Other countries think that the fresh fish is the secret, but Japan knows that the sushi rice is the true secret to perfection.
2) Soba
Soba are long, thin buckwheat noodles. Similar to sushi rice, apprentice chefs spend years mastering the fine art of making soba noodles. Soba can either be served in a hot broth or on a bamboo mat platter with a broth for dipping. Various meats can also be added, such as duck in the first picture or tempura shrimp in the second picture.
We were fortunate to be living in the Kanda area, which is home to some of the best soba noodle shops that have been around for decades. The wait staff at the popular soba shop Kanda Yabusoba “sing” a welcome when patrons enter. The husband and wife who own the shop still sit in the back corner and “sing” the orders taken from the wait staff to the cooks in the back.
3) Tempura
Tempura is Japan’s contribution to the fried-food world. Light, fluffy, golden and never greasy, the elegant “crunch” that you get from properly prepared tempura seafood and vegetables will be music to your mouth. Many noodle shops have tempura as an add-on to soba or udon; however, we highly recommend going to a specialized tempura restaurant where the whole meal is tempura cuisine of the highest level. Fancy salts, including wasabi, ukari (dried purple shiso leaves) and an umami mixture, were provided to enhance the flavor.
4) Udon
Another traditional Japanese noodle is udon, a thick wheat noodle. Udon is traditionally served in a soy sauce- and mirin-flavored broth. A tempura prawn is a typical extra topping.
5) Yakitori
Yakitori is simply skewers of charcoal grilled chicken. So simple, yet so delicious.
Every part of the chicken is on the menu, but we tended to stick with more traditional cuts. But, chicken neck was surprisingly delicious. Most places also serve a variety of other meats and vegetables on skewers as well. Some of our favorites included bacon-wrapped asparagus and bacon-wrapped basil.
Yakitori restaurants tend to be lively drinking spots for the working crowd, and they all seem to have a GIANT bottle of sake that gets poured into a sake glass with overflow cup/box. A night out with friends always calls for some overflow sake!
And we were fortunate to have TWO sets of friends visit us in Japan, so of course, we had to visit a yakitori restaurant for a proper night out eating and drinking with each of them.
You should already know Holly and Bobby from their recent Tokyo guest blog. And if you have been following along on all our adventures this year, you may recognize Ali and Mark from our Munich blog. They just happened to be vacationing in the same city as us again! We just traded in our giant Hofbrauhaus mugs for overflow sake glasses.
6) Ramen
I’ll admit that I wasn’t super thrilled about ramen because of the connotation that it has in the US, so it was lower down on our priority list. We finally made it to a place that came highly recommended on the last week of our stay, and I am so disappointed that I did not go more than once. We were so impressed! The place we went called Kazami is down a little alley in the Ginza region and serves some of the best ramen in town. You sit down at a wooden bar with only a few chairs and can see into the gleaming kitchen to watch the chef in action.
We had their thick sake lees ramen: a hearty soup made from the sake-making residue with thick noodles and topped with braised pork belly, pork shoulder, fried tofu and soft-boiled egg.
The thick, umami sake broth is to die for and considered the restaurant’s unique specialty. To add a Japanese quirky touch, you order and pay using a vending machine, similar to many popular restaurants around Tokyo, to improve ordering and paying efficiency. Very Japanese.
7) Tonkatsu/Tonkatsu Curry
Picking a favorite food in Japan is quite difficult. Some days, sushi wins, but most days I can’t stop dreaming about tonkatsu curry. Tonkatsu is a panko-crusted fried pork cutlet. Served on top of rice and smothered in a delicious, creamy Japanese curry, you may just have one of the world’s perfect foods.
I love Indian, Thai, and Burmese curries, and somehow the Japanese make a whole different flavor profile from those. Not so spicy for those of you that worry that curry is too spicy.
For most of my time in Japan, I was so obsessed with tonkatsu curry that I didn’t even realize how important tonkatsu alone was to Japanese cuisine. When visiting Yasuda at his sushi bar, we were discussing our stay in Japan and living in the Kanda area. He told us that we were in the BEST area for tonkatsu, and we had no idea. We were able to walk to one of the most popular in Tokyo called Marugo.
This classic tonkatsu restaurant has been around for 40 years and has lots of fans. They have perfected the crispy (never greasy) batter surrounding succulent, juicy meat.
Traditional tonkatsu is served with a side of cabbage and rice along with a special tonkatsu sauce similar to Worcestershire sauce.
Lastly, you can’t forget about katsusando, the tonkatsu sandwich. For casual lunches and picnics, the Japanese took the popular tonkatsu and placed it inside fluffy, white, crustless bread. Another winner!
8) Kaiseki
Kaiseki is a traditional multi-course Japanese meal. The style originated centuries ago along with the traditional tea ceremony in Kyoto. The food is served in exquisite vessels and often resembles a work of art more than food.
First course: sesame tofu dumpling with ice fish and soy sauce
Fourth course: sashimi served in a decorative vessel
Fifth course: 9 kinds of traditional delicacies; egg yolk miso, bonito cake, fish cake, fried tomato, lotus root around octopus, fried onion, tofu, eel sushi, edamame
We were fortunate to get to share this special experience with Holly and Bobby. Together, we were brave enough to try the infamous fugu (puffer fish). Only experienced and highly skilled chefs are allowed to prepare fugu because it is extremely poisonous if done incorrectly. Here we are toasting to our potential demise:
9) Shabu Shabu
Shabu shabu is the cooking of thin slices of beef or pork in a savory broth. We splurged at an all-you-can-eat shabu restaurant with premium Kobe beef. Look at that beautiful marbling!
The pot is often split into two sides so that you can try two different broth flavors. Vegetables are also a big part of shabu shabu, and this restaurant had a bar full of fresh vegetables and noodles to add to your meat. But, when you are getting endless Kobe beef, making room for vegetables was pretty hard.
10) Okonomiyaki
Okonomiyaki literally means “as you like it” and is hard to describe but best characterized as a sort-of Japanese pizza meets a pancake. This comfort food normally contains cabbage and then a number of any other ingredients that you like. Our first outing, we tried the shrimp, squid, pork, bacon combo with a fried egg on top. Part of the fun is that many of these restaurants actually have YOU do the cooking. So, here we are doing our best to make this crazy concoction.
And our final product…with the finishing touches of bonito flakes, dried seaweed flakes, mayonnaise, and Worcester-style sauce.
Our creation was pretty tasty, but we were curious to try it again with a professional touch. While in Kyoto, we actually decided to have two different varieties back-to-back to compare. Each city has developed its own style with the original coming from Osaka. The Kyoto style uses green onions instead of cabbage.
We went to the famous Issen Yoshoku, where this special pancake is the ONLY dish proudly served. This quirky restaurant has fun decorations to keep you entertained while the chefs are preparing the dish in an open-air kitchen right by the entrance.
After sharing one, we trekked across town to another restaurant called Donguri, which has been making okonomiyaki since 1977 and is often considered one of the best in town for the Osaka-version of the pancake. Here, we got to relax in a beautiful restaurant setting while professional chefs cooked up our delicious pancakes.
After cooking, they were brought out to a griddle in front of us so that we could put on the “decorative” finishing touches.
The verdict: Both Jimmy and I preferred the flavor of the Osaka-style with the cabbage versus the Kyoto-style with the green onions. And, of course, the professional chefs made it better than we did.
11) Teppanyaki
Teppanyaki is a traditional Japanese steakhouse similar to what you would expect in the US. However, in Japan, they take the cooking a bit more seriously and there are no “flaming volcano onions” or shrimp flipping as part of the show. In addition, teppanyaki tend to be the higher end restaurants serving top-of-the-line Kobe beef steaks and lobster. The style of cooking actually evolved in Japan to accommodate the influx of Western tourists after WWII. Not as popular with the locals, tourists loved watching the skilled chefs prepare the food on the open grill in front of them and were more familiar with the cuisine than other traditional Japanese foods.
Our favorite part of the “show” was watching the fatty pieces that the chef cut from the edges of the Kobe steaks caramelize in the corner of the grill for almost the entire length of the meal.
Oh the suspense…there must be a purpose or a plan for these little niblets of deliciousness? Ahh…of course…to flavor the fried rice. And wow, it was some of the best fried rice we’ve eaten.
12) Donburi
Donburi is a basic rice bowl dish consisting of fish, meat, or vegetables served over rice. When in Tokyo, you have to go to the famous Tsukiji fish market for fish fresh off the boat. To truly let the fish shine, we went with two simple donburi, specifically kaisen-don and negitoro-don. Kaisen-don is thinly shaped sashimi (raw fish) on top of a bowl of rice. Negitoro-don is diced toro (fatty tuna) on top of a bowl of rice. With a little sprinkle of soy sauce on top, this combination is absolutely heavenly.
13) Yakisoba
Like every Asian culture, Japan also has its own version of fried noodles. Yakisoba noodles are made from wheat, not buckwheat as soba would imply. Yaki just means “grilled” or “pan-fried”. The noodles are flavored with small pieces of pork, a fried egg, a thick sauce similar to the tonkatsu sauce, and garnished with fish flakes, pickled ginger, and seaweed powder.
We discovered yakisoba while looking for lunch in a quiet neighborhood in Kyoto. We found this cute little shop with only two tables and a small bar. A little, old Japanese woman was behind the bar cooking up all kinds of amazing grilled foods like our yakisoba as well as okonomiyaki and takoyaki (fried octopus balls).
14) “Sweet” sushi
Our Airbnb hostess recommended that we try this traditional food that she called “sweet” sushi. Kanda-shinoda was a tiny shop just downstairs from our apartment that specializes in this type of old-school sushi and has been around since 1902. This vegetarian-style sushi is often eaten more as a snack, light lunch, or at picnics. The lack of raw fish threw us off when we first entered the store and were trying to figure out what everything was. The key ingredient is still the famous sushi rice.
To be honest, we weren’t huge fans of this type of sushi, but the piece that we liked the best (far right in the picture below) might be the most popular as we could actually find information about it. Inarizushi is simply sushi rice stuffed in a slightly sweet tofu pouch that has a bit of a spongy texture. The other pieces were the traditional nori (seaweed) roll with sushi rice stuffed with a vegetable like marinated, dried gourd shavings (Kanpyo makizushi) or cucumber.
15) Sake
Sake, fermented rice, is the perfect compliment to Japanese cuisine. Sake, often referred to as rice wine, is actually made in a process more similar to beer. We were fortunate to be in Tokyo during the annual cherry blossom Sake Festival.
The day we went, the sake brewers that were in the line-up were considered the “masters of sake”, the best in the industry.
As we walked around, I noticed one of them sounded very familiar, “Born”. I looked it up, and sure enough, we had met the man behind the Born label, often referred to as the Sake King or the Elvis of Sake because of his crazy personality. He was pouring sake at the annual cherry blossom festival in DC a few years back.
When we sampled their sake this time, I told the man pouring our drinks that we had met the Sake King. I couldn’t believe it when he told me that the Sake King was his dad. So, we have now met two generations of the Born legacy.
16) Mochi
Mochi is a Japanese rice cake made from short-grain glutinous rice pounded into a paste and then formed into the desired shape. Mochi come in a variety of flavors including green tea, strawberry, and cherry blossom and are often stuffed with fillings, such as sweet red bean paste. Ichigo daifuku is a sweet red bean-filled mochi with an entire strawberry inside.
My favorite variation is mochi ice cream. The rice paste is stuffed with a small ball of ice cream.
17) Anmitsu
Anmitsu is a dessert that consists of cubed agar (a white translucent jelly made from red algae) topped with sweet bean paste, rice flour dumplings, and fruits, all drizzled with a brown sugar syrup. We ordered ours with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to help give it a bit more of a dessert-y feel.
Let’s just say that this is an interesting concoction (Jimmy liked it more than I did, but his dessert preferences are questionable…who picks lemon and vanilla desserts over chocolate?). We had to try it because we lived just a couple blocks away from this cute little shop, Takemura, that specialized in this traditional dessert.
18) “Japanified” American fast food
Okay…hear me out on this last one…I have talked about Americanized sushi. But, there is definitely some Japanified American fast food that is quite interesting. One of our guilty pleasures in foreign countries is checking out the local American fast food chains, especially McDonald’s, to see the crazy items that other countries add to the menu. The usual items are there, but there is always something unique to the country. Of course, Japan has come up with some of our favorite creations. How could we pass up the opportunity to try the Giga Bacon Teritama, a burger smothered in teriyaki sauce and topped with a fried egg and bacon? Of course, they also offered the seasonal cherry blossom McFizz with a side of sakura shrimp salt fries.
We also were pleasantly surprised to run into our first Taco Bell abroad. The unique Japanese creation here was the shrimp and avocado burrito with wasabi.
So, there you have it, from fancy kaiseki dinners and world-reknowned sushi masters to comfort food like okonomiyaki and Taco Bell, there really is something special for everybody in the diverse world of Japanese cuisine.
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