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In summer, the beverage of choice at a yakitori restaurant is beer or cold sake, while in winter it’s hot sake. A few drinks and enough skewers to fill you up should cost ¥3000 to ¥4000 per person. Yakitori restaurants are usually small places, often near train stations, and are best identified by a red lantern outside and the smell of grilled chicken.

Sushi & Sashimi

Like yakitori, sushi is considered an accompaniment for beer and sake. Nonetheless, both Japanese and foreigners often make a meal of it, and it’s one of the healthiest meals around. All proper sushi restaurants serve their fish over rice, in which case it’s called sushi; without rice, it’s called sashimi or tsukuri (or, politely, o-tsukuri).

There are two main types of sushi: nigiri-zushi (served on a small bed of rice – the most common variety) and maki-zushi (served in a seaweed roll). Lesser-known varieties include chirashi-zushi (a layer of rice covered in egg and fish toppings), oshi-zushi (fish pressed in a mould over rice) and inari-zushi (rice in a pocket of sweet, fried tofu). Whatever kind of sushi you try, it will be served with lightly vinegared rice. Note that nigiri-zushi and maki-zushi will contain a bit of wasabi.

Sushi is not difficult to order. If you sit at the counter of a sushi restaurant you can simply point at what you want, as most of the selections are visible in a refrigerated glass case between you and the sushi chef. You can also order à la carte from the menu. When ordering, you usually order ichi-nin mae (one portion), which usually means two pieces of sushi. Be careful, since the price on the menu will be that of only one piece. If ordering à la carte is too daunting, you can take care of your whole order with just one or two words by ordering mori-awase, an assortment plate of nigiri-zushi. These usually come in three grades: futsū nigiri (regular nigiri), jō nigiri (special nigiri) and toku-jō nigiri (extra-special nigiri). The difference is in the type of fish used. Most mori-awase contain six or seven pieces of sushi.

Be warned that meals in a good sushi restaurant can cost upwards of ¥10,000, while an average establishment can run from ¥3000 to ¥5000 per person. One way to sample the joy of sushi on the cheap is to try an automatic sushi place, usually called kaiten-zushi, where the sushi is served on a conveyor belt that runs along a counter. Here you simply reach up and grab whatever looks good to you (which certainly takes the pain out of ordering). You are charged by the number of plates of sushi that you have eaten. Plates are colour-coded by their price and the cost is written either somewhere on the plate itself or on a sign on the wall. You can usually fill yourself up in one of these places for ¥1000 to ¥2000 per person.

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The Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo is the world’s largest. It handles 2246 tonnes of marine products a day (more than 450 kinds of fish!).

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Randy Johnson’s ‘Sushi a la Carte’ (www.ease.com/~randyj/rjsushi.htm) is a must for sushi lovers – it explains everything you need to know about ordering and enjoying sushi.

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Before popping the sushi into your mouth, dip it very lightly in shōyu, which you pour from a small decanter into a low dish specially provided for the purpose. If you’re not good at using hashi (chopsticks), don’t worry – sushi is one of the few foods in Japan that is perfectly acceptable to eat with your hands. Slices of gari (pickled ginger) will also be served to help refresh the palate. The beverage of choice with sushi is beer or sake (hot in winter and cold in summer), with a cup of green tea at the end of the meal.

Note that most of the items on this sample sushi menu can be ordered as sashimi. Just add the words ‘no o-tsukuri’ to get the sashimi version (o-tsukuri is the more common Japanese expression for sashimi). So, for example, if you wanted some tuna sashimi, you would order ‘maguro no o-tsukuri’. Note that sashimi often appears in other kinds of restaurants, not just sushi specialists. Shokud