Japanese Food

Japanese Food
Talking about "Japanese Food" is a bit like talking about "American Food" - there's a lot of different ingredients, spices and flavours available. At the core of Japanese food is an immediate closeness with the ocean surrounding them, and an abiding fondness for pickled and bitter flavours. But over the years the Japanese have adopted many external cuisines and made them their own. If you leave yourself open to eating in Japan you can find a wide range of fish and fowl, mammals and plantmatter to chew on.
	Unagi	While "unagi," or barbequeued sea eel, is a mainstay of many delicious sushi dinners, you will find restaurants in Japan serving Unagi steaks on their own. Not to mention the hearts and spines of these beasts to boot.
	Yakitori	Yakitori literally means roasted bird. You'll find roadside shacks set up to serve little skewers of chicken.
	Tempura	Take vegetables, or shrimp, freshwater eel, dip them in egg, roll them in flour and small bits of dry hard pasta, then submerge briefly in hot oil, and you've got tempura. Tempura was adopted from Portugese travellers who visited in the 1500s. The word is derived from ??. Chandra and I once tried to make tempura - instead of buying pre-chopped bits of asfadsf we bought pasta and tried to chop our own. As a result, the Cyborganic kitchen was littered with small pasta bits.
	noodles
	Ramen	Fried noodles floating in soy sauce, ramen, salt broth, or Pork Fat. It may not be healthy or subtle, but it's often delicious and it's a mainstay of Japanese cuisine. Thin squiggly noodles are boiled and then fried? Tetsugakudou Ramen is ramen made with ample black magic. Ramen Museum - I want to visit.
	Soba	Soba means buckwheat noodles. While they can be served with tempura and other fixings, they are often served alone, cold noodles with a dipping sauce. Austere and potentially delicious.
	Udon	Udon are the thicker noodles, made of rice flour? They might come in a soup similar to ramen. The best Udon is "inaniwa," a thin Udon popular in Akita, northern Japan.
	meat
	Gyudon	Thinly sliced beef marinated in ?? served on top of a bowl of rice. Simple, and often quite cheap. Yoshinoya is the leading purveyor of this fare.
	Shabu Shabu	Thinly sliced beef, cooked as you like it in a hot pot of bubbling broth sitting in the middle of your table. Add mushrooms, carrots, tofu and noodles, it's somewhere between a soup and boiled beef. Usually, it comes with a sweet peanutty sauce that can not be denied. Sukiyaki is often offered in the same restaurants.
	Horsemeat	Japanese folks eat horsemeat. Not as a matter of course, but there are speciality restaurants here and there that serve it.
	fish
	Sushi and Sashimi	Japan is an island. They love pure sea products. Sushi specifically refers to the vinegared rice involved, but broadly means raw fish and other stuff wrapped with seaweed and rice. Sashimi is just plain fish, maybe with a sidedish of rice. People near Tokyo might visit Tsukiji - a mind-boggling macabre aquarium and chaos emporium to find the freshest fish around.
	miscellaneous
	Okonomiyake	Do It Yourself pancakes piled high with cabbage, meat, eggs, noodles, whatever you have laying around.
	Natto	Prove your Japanese-ness by eating pungeant fermented soybeans.

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