If ever I get to Japan, I want to...

1. eat okonomiyaki that I made myself
2. ogle at plastic food
3. hoard buy JE photos
4. hoard buy cute stuff (especially stationery!)
5. eat tamagoyaki
6. eat (i eat a lot, don't i?) mochi and ice cream and all other cute japanese desserts (shuu kurimu! --> actually just cream puffs)
7. go to Akihabara
8. go to Harajuku (and take stalker photos of all the people)

Oh wait. I don't have a camera.

T_T

Anyway, it's time for Charmaine's Japanese Lessons!

Japanese Lesson # 2: Food
Part 1

Before we actually learn Japanese terms for food, let us learn the most important phrase that should be used when eating (but not in the Philippines, unless you want to look weird).

Itadakimasu! - roughly means "I humbly receive" which one should always say before eating, accompanied by putting hands together in a clapping position while holding chopsticks (the right way!).

Now that that's over, let us now proceed to FOOD!

When it comes to fried food, there is TEMPURA and FURAI. Understand that "furai" is basically just "fry" made to sound Japanese-y. Tempura uses a kind of batter that makes it puffy, while furai is made with the "triumvirate of Japanese frying" (I actually copied that off somewhere I don't remember. in fact, i think i copied it wrong): flour, beaten egg, breadcrumbs. (in short you first cover the food you want to furai (haha) with flour, then dip it into the egg, then cover with breadcrumbs. i have yet to try this)

another food that uses the "triumvirate of Japanese frying" is TONKATSU or breaded porkchop. TON 豚 is pork, and KATSU is chop cutlet. When tonkatsu is served on top of a bowl of rice (usually with a raw egg), it is now called KATSUDON. (DON kind of means "rice bowl" --> more on this later)

By the way, EBI is shrimp. So, EBI TEMPURA is shrimp tempura and EBI FURAI is fried breaded shrimp.

(I'm basically just reading off a Japanese restaurant menu and analyzing what it says.)

GYOZA is dumpling and is actually a Chinese dish (餃子).

Moving on, DONBURI 丼, usually shorted to DON means "rice bowl". There are lots of variations, such as:

GYUDON - beef rice bowl (GYU meaning beef 牛)
OYAKODON - chicken and egg rice bowl (OYA means parent 親, KO means child 子, thus parent and child means chicken and egg. isn't it just brilliant? no? oh. ok.)
BUTADON 豚丼- pork bowl (less used). if you noticed, the character for BUTA 豚 is also read as TON (as in TONKATSU). this is because Japanese kanji are adapted from Chinese characters (okay fine, they really ARE just Chinese characters) and thus have different readings depending on usage.

We now move on to noodles.

RAMEN 拉麺 - a Japanese dish of noodles served in broth that originated in China (copied from Wikipedia) (by the way, these things
which are commonly found in Japanese ramen are actually called Naruto (haha) because Naruto literally means whirlpool and that spiral thing in them probably look like whirlpools. so there :D they're actually fish cakes (not unlike fishballs))

SOBA - a thin noodle made from buckwheat flour. it is common, though, to refer to any thin noodle as soba (YAKI 焼 means grilled, but YAKISOBA doesnt mean grilled soba, but grilled thin noodles! yay!)

UDON 餛飩- a thick wheat-based noodle. (the characters actually mean "wanton" in Chinese. go figure.)

By the way, if you've been to Teriyaki Boy, they serve a dish called GYUYAKINIKUDON 牛焼肉丼. You now know what that means. ^.^

And here ends Part 1 of Charmaine's Japanese Lesson # 2: Food.

(The next part/s will be covering sushi and Japanese desserts!)

Thank you for reading! Once again, feel free to correct me! I don't really know Japanese and am just learning all these from Japanese restaurant menus and Wikipedia.

By the way, in this lesson, I included the kanji for some of the food in this post because I think they would be familiar to you guys. I probably won't do this for other topics though because it isn't as relevant. :D