Japanese cuisine (和食, washoku) offers an abundance of gastronomical delights with a boundless variety of regional and seasonal dishes as well as international cuisine.
BENTO
A meal in a box.
As most Japanese food can be eaten cold, the cuisine lends itself to being packed – often very attractively – in a box for handy consumption anywhere. Prices vary according to the contents, but are usually very reasonable. Bento meals are available in many restaurants (to eat in), sold from kiosks at railway stations, and from trolleys on trains themselves; they are very convenient for train journeys.
BREAKFAST
Where this is provided at good-class ryokans, it is definitely recommendable in preference to the western-style breakfast offered.
Most dishes are the same as those of other meals, but the umeboshi plum is a breakfast speciality. Its astringent flavour will wake you up.
CHAWAN-MUSHI
A savoury steamed egg custard, usually served as an appetiser. Chawan is a tea cup, mushi is steam, so it is literally “steamed in a tea bowl”. The custard is flavoured with soy sauce, dashi, and mirin (slightly sweet rice wine), with numerous ingredients such as shitake mushroom and boiled shrimp or chicken. It is served in a tea-cup shaped bowl, either hot or cold.
DONBURI
A one-bowl lunchtime dish, consisting of a donburi (big bowl) full of hot steamed rice with various savoury toppings:
Katsudon: with deep-fried breaded pork cutlet (also tonkatsudon)
Tekkadon: with tuna sashimi
Oyakodon: “Parent and child”): topped with chicken and egg (or sometimes salmon and salmon roe)
Gyudon: with seasoned beef
Tendon: with tempura
Unadon: with broiled eel (unagi) and vegetables.
MISO SOUP (Misoshiru)
This traditional soup is served all over Japan, with most meals: 75% of Japanese people have miso soup at least once a day!
It consists of a stock (dashi) into which miso paste is added, and other ingredients too, depending on regional and seasonal recipes.
The soup can be suitable for vegetarians if the dashi stock is made from kombu (dried kelp) and/or dried shiitake mushrooms. But it is more often made with niboshi (dried sardines) or katsuobushi (dried and smoked bonito).
According to custom, the solid ingredients are chosen to reflect the seasons and to provide contrasts of colour, texture, and flavor. A strongly-flavoured ingredient like negi (spring onion) is often used together with a delicately-flavoured one like tofu. Ingredients that float, such as wakame seaweed, and ingredients that sink, such as potatoes, are also combined. Ingredients may include mushrooms, potatoes, seaweed, onion, shrimp, fish, clams, or sliced daikon radish. So many ingredients can be used, according to region or individual taste – but not all together: just a few in one soup!
It’s also worth mentioning that the miso soup is not a “course” on its own, but is served and consumed with the rest of the meal.
RAMEN
Wheat noodles in a meat-based broth (eg. chicken), with a topping such as sliced pork, (chashu), seaweed, kamaboko (see above), green onions, and even corn.
Almost every locality or prefecture in Japan has its own variety of ramen, from the tonkotsu (pork bone) ramen of Kyushu to the miso ramen of Hokkaido.
SASHIMI
Slices of raw fish. As it is so fresh, it melts in the mouth with hardly any fishy taste.
Sashimi is sometimes the first course in a formal Japanese meal, but is also often served as a main course with rice and miso soup in separate bowls. Sashimi is traditionally considered to be the finest dish in Japanese cuisine, and many people maintain that its delicate flavour should be sampled before other more strongly-flavoured dishes.
The slices of fish are can be dipped in soy sauce or a small amount of wasabi paste (a pale green hot paste like mustard or horseradish). Some of the most popular sashimi: salmon (sake), squid(ika), cooked shrimp (ebi), tuna (maguro), mackerel (saba), octopus (tako).
SHABU SHABU
The dish is traditionally made with thinly sliced beef, though nowadays pork, chicken or other meats may be used.
The ingredients are brought to the table raw. The fun consists in cooking them yourself. The dish is prepared by submerging a very thin slice of meat or a piece of vegetable in a pot of boiling broth (dashi) made with a sort of seaweed (kombu) and swishing it back and forth several times. (The familiar swishing sound is where the dish gets its name. Shabu-shabu roughly translates as “swish-swish”.) Because the meat is so thin, it takes only a few moments to cook. The meat is usally served with tofu (bean curd), Chinese cabbage, nori (edible seaweed), onions, carrots and mushrooms. These vegetables are dipped in the broth too, as appropriate. The cooked meat and vegetables are usually dipped in goma (sesame seed) sauce and eaten with steamed rice or noodles.
At the end, the leftover broth from the pot is usually combined with the remaining rice or noodles, and the resulting soup is eaten last.
