Enjoying Japanese Food

While you wander around to see all those Japanese unique culture and history, you might also want to try the cuisine. Japanese cuisine offer a great variety of dishes, start from rice, noodle, meat, cake, snack and even the bento box. Here is a list of delicious Japanese foods that I tried:


Sukiyaki & Shabu-shabu
My friend suggested us to tried this restaurant in Tokyo near Ningyocho station, he told us that the Sukiyaki is bloody delicious. When we got there, we have to queue about 1,5 - 2 hours before we were seated. We decided to order 1 sukiyaki set and 1 shabu-shabu set. The waiter helped us to cook the “Sukiyaki” meat and put the meat in raw egg. I’m so exciting to taste the meat cooked like that because I never eat raw egg before, and when I took a bite all I can said “It’s phenomenal”. But unfortunately shabu-shabu is a little bit let down , I don’t like both of vinegar and sesame dipping sauce. Finally for 2 lunch sets cost us 9450 JPY (damn really expensive!!).

Vinegar & Sesame Sauce for dipping - Tokyo

Cooking Sukiyaki - Tokyo

Sukiyaki  - Tokyo

Sukiyaki - Tokyo

Shabu-sabu - Tokyo

Takoyaki
Takoyaki is a popular street food in Japan, a ball-shape snack with bits of octopus and dough inside a slightly crispy shell, garnished with takoyaki sauce, mayo. You basically can get it everywhere, and it  will cost you between 500 and 800 yen.  I have this several times from a stall near my hotel, mall food court and street night market.

Takoyaki - Gindako Tokyo

Takoyaki - Osaka

Ramen

Who doesn't know this Japanese noodle soup dish. Ramen is really variety in many store, usually come with toppings as sliced pork, dried seaweed, green onions. But some restaurant really want to make something different and come with different topping such restaurant put tempura, or even dry ramen where you separate the broth in other bowl. Prices range from about 700-1100 JPY for a bowl of noodles.

Shrimp tempura ramen - Nikko

Ramen & Grilled Mochi - Kyoto Station

Dry Ramen - Kyoto Station

Unagi

Unagi is one of the most interesting Japanese delicacy food, a dish with sliced eel served on a bed of rice. Although it takes a while to cooked it but the results are well worth the wait. For me, the eel is delicious with a little crispy sweet sauce topping, the combination worked perfectly. I enjoying the dish so much, but my husband doesn't like he said its fishy (PS: he doesn't like seafood!!). The prices range between 1000 - 2000 JPY, various depends on the freshness of eel and restaurant location. 

Unagi (Eel) - Miyajima

Unagi (Eel) - Dontonbori Osaka

Katsu Set

This katsu dishes are often served with a simple shredded cabbage salad. It's a common dish in Japan, the main meat ingredients are various start from pork, chicken, beef and prawn or even combination of several meats. What I like the most from this dish are the crunchiness texture of the Katsu, I never got bored from eating this dish. Even when we are in a hurry to catch the train, we still order it to go, and it's still taste the same, its delicious and of course crunchy ^-^.

Pork cutlet set (take away) - Hiroshima

Crispy prawn set (take away)  - Hiroshima

Bento box
Bento boxes are available in many places throughout Japan, mostly you can get it from convenience stores and railway stations. Sometimes you are just stuck inside the railways station to catch the next train and that's all you can get to satisfy your tummy. Actually, nothing special about this bento box, I just like the decoration and make me curious to taste it.

Train bento box - Tokyo

Train bento box - Tokyo

Curry

On our way back to Osaka, we only have 45 minutes to 1 hour to grab some dinners before the Shinkansen (Japan Bullet train) depart. So, our choices goes to this curry restaurant. Before go inside the restaurant, you should ordered first using their vending machine, it was my first time using this kind of machine to order my foods, so we paid attention to someone else who order before us how to use it. The procedure are chose the food based on it's number, the machine will show you how much is cost, insert some money to paid the foods and finally got the ticket. Inside the restaurant just gave the ticket to the waiter and wait for your food, so simple and easy for foreigner who doesn't understand Japanese like me (^0^)v. We only wait for 5-10 minutes before the food served in front of us. It's taste okay for food that cost use around 600-900 JPY.

Curry Vending Machine - Tokyo

Chicken Katsu Curry - Tokyo

Pork & Egg Curry - Tokyo

Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese popular pancake containing a variety of ingredients, such as pork, shrimp, octopus, egg and cabbage. In Osaka, I chose to eat okonomiyaki at Dontonbori restaurants that I think its specialize in the dish. The okonomiyaki are prepared by the chef in front of you, after mixing the ingredients, pour the mixture in hot grill, cooked it slowly in both sides. When both sides of the okonomiyaki are cooked the toppings like mayonnaise,  dried seaweed and others are added. You cut it into smaller pieces and enjoy every bite is fresh from the grill. Its only cost us around 800 - 1000 JPY. Now I'm craving for this :( 

Okonomiyaki restaurant - Dontonbori Osaka

Okonomiyaki (on progress) - Dontonbori Osaka

Okonomiyaki - Dontonbori Osaka

Momiji manju

Momiji manju is small cakes in the shape of a maple leaf with varoius fillings. Usually, they're made with sweet bean paste, but cheese, chocolate and other variations are also available. Miyajima is the best place to buy them hot and fresh. I saw some people bought them so I decided to tried it too. It's teate really nice, soft with sweet filling.

Cake in a maple-leaf shape - Miyajima

Tokyo banana

Tokyo Banana is a box of banana flavored custard cakes, often considered to be the #1 souvenir of choice to be given out as gifts. There are many flavored and printed with different versions like polka dot, giraffe, strawberry. But remember not all shops sold them in all of different variation. I got this giraffe style cakes from Tokyo Skytree, although they also sold the original one but I prefer the one with chocolate filling. I spotted another shop in Tokyo station, its only sold the polka dot and original version. For me, the cake is really very soft and the filling is not too sweet. It's just so perfect.  The price around 1000 yen. More details: http://www.tokyobanana.jp/products/index.html

Tokyo banana - Tokyo