Japan is a country with a diverse and rich cuisine, with many traditional dishes famous around the world. From light dishes like sushi and sashimi to sophisticated and nutritious dishes like sukiyaki and oden, each dish has a unique flavor and preparation, imbued with Japanese history and culture through the ages and periods. If you are planning to come to Japan and want to experience the uniqueness here, you cannot ignore the famous traditional dishes of this country. Read on to know more about the ten most famous traditional Japanese dishes. Hopefully, this article will help you have more options for your trip to Japan, and don't forget to vote for your favorite food.
1 Sashimi
Japanese sashimi (Source: https://matcha-jp.com)
Referring to Japanese food, Sashimi is a dish that you should not ignore. Similar to sushi but sashimi does not include rice, sashimi is raw fish that is easily cut into pieces. The quality of fish meat caught throughout Japan's major seas makes sashimi slices always taste fresh and sweet, making them a great choice for travelers visiting Japan.
Like sushi, diners can enjoy a variety of sashimi. Some of the most popular and favored varieties are maguro and other types of tuna, salmon, mackerel, and white salmon. You can also try oysters, uni or sea urchin, and salmon roe. Sashimi is often served with soy sauce to enhance the flavor. You can also add a little wasabi on top of the sashimi to enhance the spicy flavor, but it's not mandatory. Some, such as restaurant squid mackerel, will be able to serve ginger instead of wasabi.
2 Unagi
Unagi (Source: https://matcha-jp.com)
Unagi, or eel, is a fish commonly found mainly in rivers. In Japan, it is a typical specialty in high-end Japanese cuisine. There are also many casual restaurants specializing in unagi dishes. At unagi restaurants, you can enjoy kabayaki, where the unagi is placed on skewers and grilled with a special amount of sauce containing soy, mirin, sugar and sake.
Hitsumabushi, a specialty from Nagoya, is a must-try traditional dish. It may seem unexpected with sliced pieces of kabayaki on the basis of white rice, but can be eaten in many ways, such as with spices such as green onions and wasabi, or used to make ochazuke by pouring warm green tea or broth on top. Unagi is also loved as a nutritional food against summer heat stroke because it contains a lot of protein and is good for digestion.
3 Tempura
Delicious, delicious tempura (Source: https://matcha-jp.com)
Tempura is a dish cooked from ingredients such as seafood, meat, and vegetables that are coated with flour and deep-fried in cooking oil. Fried dough is usually mixed between wheat flour and eggs. Often tempura is soaked in a special sauce called tentsuyu before eating. Tentsuyu is a sauce made from a broth made from kombu or dried fish, mirin and soy sauce, mixed in a 4:1:1 ratio and cooked. You can add pounded ginger or white radish to the sauce for a refreshing flavor.
4 Soba và Udon
Traditional Japanese noodles (Source: https://matcha-jp.com)
Soba is a noodle dish made from buckwheat flour cut into thin fibers with a width of 1cm to 2cm. After boiling the noodles in hot water, it is common to eat cold sauce noodles or pour boiling water into a bowl and enjoy. Soba sauce (tsuyu) is usually made from kombu or dried tuna broth, seasoned with soy sauce and mirin and is important for a delicious soba experience. Soba, which can be enjoyed hot or cold, is ideal all year round.
Udon is a typical noodle dish with thick noodles, which is a very popular traditional Japanese dish. Wheat flour is made from wheat flour and cut into large noodles of great thickness. After boiling the noodles in hot water, udon is enjoyed along with seafood broth and ingredients such as tempura to taste. Like soba, you can enjoy hot or cold udon depending on your preferences and choices.
5 Onigiri
Convenient rice balls (Source: https://matcha-jp.com)
You may have come across Onigiri, aka rice balls, in many Japanese movies before. Onigiri may seem like simple white rice but are usually filled with meat inside and wrapped in a sheet of salty seaweed. They are made in home bento and are often sold at convenience stores and supermarkets. This is a popular choice as a snack or half-time snack.
Common flavors for Onigiri include algae, sour apricots (umeboshi), salmon, and tuna paste. There are so many flavors and options, you can find homemade ingredients or instant rice balls at many convenience stores or supermarkets everywhere.
6 Yakitori
Famously delicious yakitori (Source: https://matcha-jp.com)
Yakitori is a popular dish in Japan made from chicken cut into skewers on bamboo sticks and grilled over a charcoal fire. Often featured on the menus of izakaya and casual restaurants in Japan, this is a good suggestion if you're wandering the streets of Tokyo and want a late-night meal. It is especially tastier when combined with alcohol. In addition, if you go to a Japanese festival, this food will definitely be an indispensable dish if you want to participate in the festival wholeheartedly.
Yakitori is ordered according to the portion of the chicken. You'll also find other meats and vegetables on the stick. It is usually seasoned with gentle spices before being put on the grill, so this is a fairly simple and easy dish for Japanese people. After grilling, you can eat directly on the stick or remove the chicken on a plate and serve with rice.
7 Sukiyaki
A bowl of nutritious Sukiyaki (Source: https://matcha-jp.com)
Sukiyaki is a dish cooked in a small iron skillet, which is popular in autumn and winter in Japan. It became popular in Japan around the 19th century. This dish is prepared at home or also on the menu of the restaurant, this will be a dish you think of right when you are craving a nutritious dish.
Sukiyaki is made from a variety of ingredients, such as thin beef, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, and tofu. Diners prepare their own dishes by grilling the meat pieces in a pan after pouring over a few drops of sukiyaki sauce. After the ingredients are cooked, to eat sukiyaki in the traditional way, soak the meat or vegetables in the egg yolk. This is a delicious and nutritious dish, served with rice and will help you get more nutritious and warm on cold days.
8 Oden
An Oden store in Japan (Source: https://matcha-jp.com)
Oden is a dish made from a variety of ingredients stewed in broth. The ingredients are chosen to enhance the flavor of dashi (usually composed of a mixture of seafood and seaweed) and have a salty, sweet flavor. Oden has been eaten for a long time in Japan and is believed to have been first created in the Muromachi period (1336-1573).
Pale vegetables, tofu and fish are common ingredients in oden. White radish (daikon), a thick-rooted tuber, can be found in most oden shops. Another popular option is ganmodoki, a multi-vegetable mixture with tofu made in a circle.
Restaurants and street food stalls sell oden, sometimes you can even see it at convenience stores in the fall and winter. In Tokyo's Akihabara area, there are vending machines selling oden in cans. Don't forget to try this iconic dish when visiting Japan!
9 Miso Soup
Miso Soup - Japan's favorite soup (Source: https://matcha-jp.com)
Miso soup is a famous Japanese dish, praised for its delicious taste and great health benefits. Often drink with other side and main dishes. In the traditional Japanese diet, every day usually consists of drinking miso soup.
Miso soup is made simply, with a little fermented miso, which has a rich taste, added to Japanese dashi (usually a mixture of tuna and seaweed). There are hundreds of different types of miso soup by region, from simple soups with seaweed and tofu, to those with shrimp and crab and many other vegetables.
Miso paste itself also comes in a variety of varieties, from the sweet-tasting white to the more concentrated red. This is a dish served at most Japanese restaurants from high-end to casual with many different prices. If you have the opportunity to visit Japan, do not forget to enjoy this special traditional miso soup.
10 Sushi
A Sushi Meal (Source: https://matcha-jp.com)
Sushi is the most famous Japanese food worldwide. At many places, it is served in a variety of ways and prices, from kaiten-zushi (conveyor belt sushi), where customers can enjoy sushi at a reasonable price of around 100 yen per plate, to the age-old, luxurious traditional Edomae (Edo-style sushi), where you sit at a quiet bar to eat sushi while sushi is prepared directly before your eyes.
Typically, sushi is simply a plate of rice mixed with vinegar pressed with a piece of raw fish or seafood, called a neta, on top. Sushi is usually served with soy sauce and wasabi, but those who don't like wasabi can ask for "sabi-nuki" (meaning "no wasabi").
Sushi can be eaten with chopsticks or directly by hand. However, you should pay attention, when dipping sushi in soy sauce, you should flip it over and apply soy sauce on the neta, not on the rice. This is to prevent the rice from being sucked up too much soy sauce and losing the original flavor of the "neta".
