If you're fond of fried chicken then trying karaage is a must. Karaage is Japanese fried chicken that's juicy, crispy and bursting with flavor. What makes the fried chicken Japanese is that it usually uses soy sauce and sake when cooking the chicken. Karaage can be found anywhere. You can find it at food stalls, convenience stores, bento shops (lunch box shops), and a menu item that every Japanese person knows is on any izakaya menu.

Photo Credit: Just One Cookbook

Kit Kat is one of the most popular chocolate brands in Japan for several reasons. In Japanese, Kit Kat is pronounced Kitto Katsu which is an expression of good luck in Japan or literally “you will win”. It is often given to school children before a test as a good luck treat. Aside from this clever word play, Kit Kat also has over a hundred different flavors in Japan with some bizarre ones like wasabi, sake and pumpkin pudding to name a few! You can buy Kit Kat almost anywhere in Japan. Of course, you will come across the basic ones in supermarkets, but you can find far more varieties in Don Quijotes, select Bic Cameras and the Kit Kat Chocolatory stores for high-end expensive Kit Kats.

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Kombu is Japanese kelp widely enjoyed in Japan. It is a primary ingredient in dashi (a type of broth) and forms the base for many Japanese dishes. Lots of miso soup or shabu shabu will use kombu as the base of the broth. Kombu can also be enjoyed pickled and eaten as a side dish with rice. We try pickled kombu from a store that opened up in 1877 as part of our Tokyo food tour.

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Manju is a traditional Japanese confection that is one of the cheapest and most popular in Japan. There are many types of manju, but most of them are typically a small round cake made from wheat, rice and buckwheat flour, filled with azuki red beans. It is commonly enjoyed with tea. You can find manju at convenience stores or wagashi shops (Japanese sweets shops).

Photo Credit: Just One Cookbook

Matcha is actually a type of ryokucha. Ryokucha is green tea and there are many different types of it such as matcha. Matcha is just the leaves of the ryokucha that are powdered after a certain process. In fact matcha is usually common only in green tea ceremonies. However, there are many flavored green tea stuff like green tea ice cream, green tea kit kats and so on. Here is a break down of different types of green tea in Japan:

Ryokucha types(Green tea): Regular green tea from the tea plant.

Matcha: Uses tea leaves that have been shaded from sunlight, dried and then powdered down. 

Sencha: The most common form of ryokucha where only the leave are harvested from the tea plant. The leaves are in the shape of a needle.

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Melon Pan is a type of Japanese sweet bread. Pan means bread in Japanese, so basically a melon bread. But, the bread itself does not taste like a melon it only resembles a shape like a melon. The bread is nice and soft on the inside and crispy like a cookie on the outside. Typically it comes in different flavors such as chocolate chip, strawberry and green tea (oddly enough not melon) and lately there have even been cream and ice cream filled melon pan! They are sold at any convenient stores and grocery stores, but of course the best ones come from melon pan specialty bakeries.

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Melon Soda is a popular drink in Japan - particularly loved by every Japanese kid. It has a neon green color to suggest it’s melon flavoring but it might not exactly taste like the fruit! Instead it’s a bit milder, creamier and more processed making for a unique, delicious soda. It’s quite popular to have Melon Soda with ice cream in it, making it a cream soda float. You can get melon sodas at most convenience stores and many restaurants.

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Nabe is a variety of different hot pot dishes typically enjoyed during the colder seasons. Most nabes are stews and soups where one giant pot sits in the middle of the table and cooks whatever you wish to have cooked inside the pot. Diners can pick whatever they want out of the pot. Usually the hot pot is accompanied by some sort of dipping sauce or broth to go along with the inside ingredients. There are many different types of nabe depending on the flavoring of the broth. It can range from very light flavored broths such as kombu stock or heavy stocks such as miso and soy sauce. Nabe is not to be confused with shabu shabu. Although very similar, the preparation between the two is different - Nabe is when all the ingredients are cooked in the pot at once while shabu shabu is cooked one by one.

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Ningyoyaki, or literally baked dolls are a famous sweet snack from Asakusa in Tokyo. They are basically small cakes filled with red beans in different shapes. There are many shops that sell Ningyoyaki at the Nakamise Shopping Street that lead up to the famous Sensoji Temple. They were invented in the late 1800s and originally were in the shapes of Shichifukujin or the Seven Lucky Gods. So, you can imagine if there was instagram back then, it would have been a big hit on social media! Now, they are in many different shapes such as temples, pagodas and even characters like Hello Kitty.

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Okonomiyaki is a pan fried, savory pancake with a variety of different toppings. It has a wide range of what can be inside of it, as the name suggests - okonomi means whatever you like and yaki means fried. The dish is widely available all over Japan, but it’s particularly famous in Hiroshima and Osaka. Usually it’s made from regular pancake batter, cabbage, green onions and meats such as pork and seafood. Almost anything goes with okonomiyaki. To best describe the dish, it’s kind of a hybrid between a pancake and pizza with your favorite toppings. To eat okonomiyaki, people go to okonomiyaki specialty stores where every table has its own iron griddle where you can cook the pancake yourself (sometimes the staff will cook for you or even be brought to you already made).

Photo Credit: Japan Guide