Japan (Lonely Planet, 11th Edition) - Chris Rowthorn [50]
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Tempura
Tempura consists of portions of fish, prawns and vegetables cooked in fluffy, nongreasy batter. When you sit down at a tempura restaurant, you will be given a small bowl of ten-tsuyu (a light brown sauce) and a plate of grated daikon to mix into the sauce. Dip each piece of tempura into this sauce before eating it. Tempura is best when it’s hot, so don’t wait too long – use the sauce to cool each piece and dig in.
While it’s possible to order à la carte, most diners choose to order teishoku, which includes rice, misoshiru and tsukemono. Some tempura restaurants offer courses that include different numbers of tempura pieces.
Expect to pay between ¥2000 and ¥10,000 for a full tempura meal. Finding these restaurants is tricky as they have no distinctive facade or decor. If you look through the window, you’ll see customers around the counter watching the chefs as they work over large woks filled with oil.
Rāmen
The Japanese imported this dish from China and put their own spin on it to make what is one of the world’s most delicious fast foods. Rāmen dishes are big bowls of noodles in a meat broth, served with a variety of toppings, such as sliced pork, bean sprouts and leeks. In some restaurants, particularly in Kansai, you may be asked if you’d prefer kotteri (thick) or assari (thin) soup. Other than this, ordering is simple: just sidle up to the counter and say rāmen, or ask for any of the other choices usually on offer (a list follows). Expect to pay between ¥500 and ¥900 for a bowl. Since rāmen is derived from Chinese cuisine, some rāmen restaurants also serve chāhan or yaki-meshi (both dishes are fried rice), gyōza (dumplings) and kara-age (deep-fried chicken pieces).
Rāmen restaurants are easily distinguished by their long counters lined with customers hunched over steaming bowls. You can sometimes hear a rāmen shop as you wander by – it’s considered polite to slurp the noodles and aficionados claim that slurping brings out the full flavour of the broth.
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More than five billion servings of instant rāmen are consumed each year in Japan.
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Soba & Udon
Soba (thin, brown buckwheat noodles) and udon (thick, white wheat noodles) are Japan’s answer to Chinese-style rāmen. Most Japanese noodle shops serve both soba and udon in a variety of ways. Noodles are usually served in a bowl containing a light, bonito-flavoured broth, but you can also order them served cold and piled on a bamboo screen with a cold broth for dipping.
By far the most popular type of cold noodles is zaru soba, which is served with bits of nori (seaweed) on top. If you order these noodles, you’ll receive a small plate of wasabi and sliced spring onions – put these into the cup of broth and eat the noodles by dipping them in this mixture. At the end of your meal, the waiter will give you some hot broth to mix with the leftover sauce, which you drink like a kind of tea. As with rāmen, you should feel free to slurp as loudly as you please.
Soba and udon places are usually quite cheap (about ¥900 a dish), but some fancy places can be significantly more expensive (the decor is a good indication of the price). See Noodle Dishes (p80) for more soba and udon dishes.
Unagi
Unagi (eel) is an expensive and popular delicacy in Japan. Even if you can’t stand the creature when served in your home country, you owe it to yourself to try unagi at least once while in Japan. It’s cooked over hot coals and brushed with a rich sauce of shōyu and sake. Full unagi dinners can be expensive, but many unagi restaurants offer unagi bentō (boxed meals) and lunch sets for around ¥1500. Most unagi restaurants display plastic models of their sets in their front windows, and may have barrels of live eels to entice passers-by.
Fugu
The deadly fugu (globefish or pufferfish) is eaten more for the thrill than the taste. It’s actually rather bland – most people liken the taste to chicken