Top 10 food experiences

In no particular order...

Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki is a kind of savoury cabbage based pancake from the Osaka area. Some people call it a Japanese pizza, because you can top it with whatever takes your fancy, but the connection to pizza ends there.

At an okonomiyaki restaurant, you sit at a booth, and the table has a built in hotplate. At some restaurants, they will make the whole okonomiyaki for you right there at your table, at others, they will make it in the kitchen, and then bring it to your table and place it on your hotplate. From there, you take your spatula, cut off a piece, put it on your plate, and enjoy. It's communal eating at its best.


Shabu-shabu

Another fantastic communal eating experience is shabu--shabu. This time, instead of a hot-plate in the middle of your table, you have a large pot of simmering broth. Into this, you briefly place thinly sliced vegetables, meat and tofu. The small pieces of food are cooked in no time, and you can fish them out again with your chopsticks, and enjoy.

It tends to be on the expensive side, but with all-you-can eat, and is both healthy (as long as you remember to include vegetables), and very tasty.


Sashimi restaurant

If it comes out of the sea, then you can eat it at a traditional Japanese restaurant, and most likely, you can eat it raw. Not only that, but it will also be beautifully presented, like the raw fish platter to the right, where you can see slices or raw fish presented between the head and tail of the fish that you are eating.

Unless you're naturally adventurous, it's best to experience this sort of food with a local, one who genuinely enjoys eating this kind of food, as there's a good chance you won't enjoy all that much of it, and it's not cheap. Personally, I don't mind certain kinds of raw fish, although it doesn't excite me either, but raw squid is awful and I haven't been able to bring myself to try raw octopus, although half-cooked stuff was a struggle to get down. I've written more about one experience here.

Despite the somewhat negative sentiments of the above paragraph, this is something that you should try, it's a real Japanese experience, and I know Westerners who love it.


Sushi Train

If you're on a budget, a sushi train gives you an opportunity to taste lots of horrid stuff above cheaply. You can try most of the standard raw Japanese seafood at a reasonable price (our local one was 105 yen a plate). Once you're enjoyed the masochistic experience of trying all the stomach turning weird and wonderful options on the menu, there is also a decent selection of the kinds of food that would look appealing to the average Westerner.


Yakitori

Yakitori literally means cooked bird. Our favourite restaurant charged 280 yen a serve, whatever it was. 280 yen for a drink, 280 yen for a plate of two skewers, 280 yen for a bowl of salad, 280 yen for dessert. Among the chicken with plum sauce, chicken meatballs with cheese , and fried battered chicken were also chicken hearts (chewy, but edible) and bowls of deep fried cartilage (rather nasty). Nevertheless, there was plenty of delicious stuff on the menu, and we could eat our fill for between $10 and $15.

Ramen
Ramen is basically a fancy version of 2-minute noodles, usually served topped with spring onions and pork slices and/or half a boiled egg. It tastes great, and is fantastic in winter as it warms you right through. No it is not healthy, but then, most Japanese food isn't.



Gyudon

Gyudon, literally beef on a bowl (of rice), was our fast food.All it was was beef and onions stewed in a sweet-soy sauce, and served on top of rice, but when dinner costs only about $4, and is delivered to you in minutes, who can complain?


Yakiniku

Traditionally a Korean-style cuisine, yakiniku has become incredibly popular in Japan. Yakiniku (literally cooked meat) is another breed of cook-it-yourself Japanese dining. With Yakiniku, you order plates of raw materials (meat, including lots of offal on offer, and vegetables), and cook them on a grill in the centre of the table. You can then dip the meat in your choice of sauce, and enjoy it hot and tasty.


Soft-serve ice-cream
Go to any tourist trap, and you'll see plenty of ice-cream stalls, all selling soft-serve. As well as the standard vanilla, and not-uncommon chocolate and caramel, there are plenty of other flavours to be found. Green tea is incredibly popular, it's actually easier to find than chocolate. Other flavours include mango, blueberry, strawberry, grape (tastes like hubba bubba), rockmelon, orange, pineapple, pumpkin, sweet potato (not bad), dark sesame (surprisingly tasty), soybean (not soymilk), and cherry blossom (pretty awful). I have actually tasted all the above listed flavours, and I suspect a few others that I have forgotten about.

Festival food

Takoyaki

Festival food is awesome. Yakisoba (fried noodles with cabbage and pork), okonimiyaki on a stick, chicken and leek skewers, fried battered chicken, beef skewers, jacket potatoes, toffee strawberries and much more. There was also the ever-present takoyaki - balls of okonomiyaki batter with bits of octopus inside. Takoyaki was a local rather foul local speciality, and rather unappetising, but after an initial taste, I only bought it to inflict on visitors.