Japanese food

It occurred to me that when I write about Japanese food in this blog, I tend to give a lot more press to the Japanese food I have not enjoyed. That is probably because it is more fun to report whatever latest monstrosity I have consumed, and sounds more impressive.

That said, there is a lot of food I like here too, both Japanese and international. I am not always eating horrible things. In my first three months or so, I was always trying new things, just to see what they were like. Now, if a variety of dishes are on the table, I don't feel any need to try them all. I established there are several things I Just Don't Like (offal, fatty meat, most sashimi, wasabi, pickles, and all Japanese sweets) so now I'm rarely in a situation where I need to eat them.


Basashi (raw horse)

Actually, Japanese people are great foodies, and I've actually become quite astonished to realise how many different types of Japanese food there are. In Australia I tended to think of Japan as having Japanese food - perhaps twenty or thirty main dishes that comprised their national cuisine. But no, there are dozens of styles of cuisine, and many, many thousands of specific dishes.

What's more, each area has its own specialties, regional varieties, favoured ingredients and special cooking styles, and each season has its preferred dishes or ingredients. Japan's also famous for presenting its food with care.

As an example, I went to Nagano a couple of weeks ago, and ate oyaki (a kind of fried little vegetable pancakey thing), a Nagano specialty. We also had rice with chestnuts, since that area of Nagano was famous for chestnuts. There are apples for sale everywhere as souvenirs, as Nagano is also famous for apples. Nagano is also famous for grapes, and there were lots of other various special foods I didn't recognise or understand.

We tried some vegetable that 'is very rare and grows in this area'. We had mushrooms because they were in season. We had apple wine. While we were eating, downstairs, hordes of people were buying Japanese 'omiyage' (souvenir) sweets specific to that town. On the train on the way back we got a very famous type of 'ekiben' (train lunch box) called 'kamameshi', these ekiben are unique to specific train stations - ours was rice topped with seasonal vegetables in a ceramic bowl.


Kamameshi ekiben

(These ekiben are a perfect example of how staggeringly large Japan's food culture seems to be. I mean, there are so many types, some of which are famous; there are even ekiben aficionados who will go around eating as many different ekiben as they can... Just check out this website. This is the Kanto area (around Tokyo) alone!! If you click on any of the starred links it will show you that place's ekiben.)

Specialised restaurants

If you are going to eat out in Japan, a lot of restaurants specialise in a particular cooking style. You can find restaurants that serve lots of different types of food, but they're less common.


Shabu-shabu (hot pot)

You might go to an okonomiyaki restaurant, for example, where you can make okonomiyaki (fried vegetable pancakes with various constituents), yakisoba (fried noodles with vegetables) or monjayaki (a lame, watery version of okonomiyaki) on the hot plate at your table.

Or you might go to a soba, udon or ramen restaurant. These different types of noodles (mostly like a big bowl of soup with noodles and various other bits and pieces) are popular as fast food too. There are a lot of small soba/udon/ramen places around train stations, where patrons stand to eat, and you'd be astonished how fast a salaryman can scarf down a huge bowl of noodles. No wonder some of the world champion eaters have come from Japan...


Soba

There are sushi and sashimi restaurants, tonkatsu (fried breaded pork cutlets, often other fried breaded meats too) restaurants, horumon (offal) restaurants, shabu-shabu or sukiyaki (hotpot) restaurants, Okinawan restaurants...


Okinawan food

Virtually every department store building has a 'restaurant floor', full of lots of these little restaurants.

There are also 'izakaya', which I've mentioned before. They're friendly, casual eating places with a small cover charge, people go there to drink and eat lots of shared dishes, various things including deep-fried chicken, sashimi, takoyaki (octopus balls), tempura, nabe, edamame (soy beans in their pod; a common finger food snack here), yakitori (grilled chicken), etc. These places are a good choice for large groups.