In Japanese style restaurant

August 24, 2017 TAKA 0 Comments

Many local Japanese restaurant have no English menu.

This article summarize letters in high frequent menu.

Japanese Food vocabulary

寿司、鮨、すし、スシ

All pronounce same, same meaning…sushi

The difference of two kanjis are below,
寿司 is longevity and leading. this letters are invented for goodluck.
Japanese sometimes invents same reading but new kanji letters instead of technical traditional ones.

And this 鮨 is its left part is 魚(fish) and right is 旨(taste good)

卵、玉子(tamago)

Pronounciation and meaning are same. tamago, it means egg.

麺(men)

Noodle

拉麺(ra-men)

This is ramen, maybe original ramen in China is same pronunciation.(accent is different.)

天婦羅(tenpura)

This is tempura,

The characters are no meanings, just used by pronunciation.
(By the way the character meanings are Heaven Wife Textile, directly translated.)

豆腐(tou hu)

This is Tofu.

In Kyoto, 湯豆腐(Yudouhu) is famous local pot dish.

It is simple, expensive, elegant and super healthy menu. (by the way,I prefer tempura to yudouhu..)

Wheat related

Rice is not only Japanese staple food, there is Mugi(wheat)

蕎麦(soba) is the backwheat itself or backwheat noodle.

And the second letter 麦 is wheat.

小麦(komugi) is just wheat.

大麦(oomugi)is barley.
小、大　are small and big.

麦茶(mugi cha) , this is wheat tea. This cold tea is drunken in summer.

Drinks

酒(pronounced sake, not saki)

It is sake or liquar. in japan, sake meaning in Japan includes bear, wine and so on.

If you wanted Japanese sake, you ordered 日本酒(Nihon shu)

Nihon is Japan or Japanese, Shu is liquor.

焼酎(shou chuu)

Shochu is Japanese rice liquor whiskey.

汁(Ju or Soup)

This means juice or soup.

味噌汁(miso siru)

This is miso soup.

果汁(ka ju)

Ka part means fruit, so it’s fruit juice.

On the package of juice, you can see like 果汁100％, it means fruit juice density.

Thank you 🙂