How to Use Chopsticks - Chapter 4: The Different Japanese Restaurants You Can Visit

Chapter 4: The Different Japanese Restaurants You Can Visit

The best part about learning how to use chopsticks properly is testing your mettle at the many Japanese restaurants that you can visit. The interesting thing about Japanese restaurants is that they have a tendency to specialize. You’ll have a hard time finding a restaurant that will serve you ramen and okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancakes) and yakiniku (Japanese barbecue) and sushi all from one menu. Usually, what you’ll find is a ramen shop or a sushi shop – it’s rarely both.

The best thing about this arrangement is that you can actually visit different restaurants and explore the subcultures of each one. And believe me, there’s plenty to learn.

Here’s a guide to the different kinds of restaurants that you’ll find in Japan and maybe in your own neighborhood:

1. Sushi Restaurants
Say Japanese food and people think sushi. It is by far the most iconic kind of Japanese food but it isn’t for those newly inducted into the halls of Japanese cuisine because it often comes with raw fish. The most common form of sushi is the nigiri sushi, the finger-roll kind of sushi. The other kinds of sushi are the maki sushi like the famous California Roll and the temaki, a nori-cone filled with thinly cut ingredients.

One of the most famous restaurants in Ginza, Tokyo is a sushi restaurant called Sukiyabashi Jiro located in a subway and run by a renowned sushi chef, Jiro Ono. It was awarded three stars by the Michelin Guide and is the subject of the documentary Jiro Loves Sushi. It takes months of waiting to get a reservation at this revered restaurant where sushi fans go to worship.

Sushi restaurants range from the formal and expensive to the cheaper varieties like the conveyor belt sushi. While most sushi restaurants serve sushi exclusively with maybe a few offerings of side dishes, it is also traditional for them to serve sashimi or thin slices of raw fish served without the sushi rice.

The Japanese often eat sushi by picking them up with their fingertips but using chopsticks is also traditional.

2. Shabu-shabu Restaurant
A shabu-shabu restaurant is one of those strange Asian creations where you actually cook your own food at a restaurant. Truly counter-intuitive but surprisingly fun and it makes for a great group dining experience.

In a shabu-shabu restaurant, you will find a small stove on your table with a simmering pot of water or dashi (Japanese broth) which you can then add thin slices of beef, sliced vegetables, and other flavouring ingredients. Traditionally, shabu-shabu would always feature beef but these days they also offer pork, crab, lobster, chicken, and even lamb.
To cook, you use a pair of chopsticks to place the ingredients in and to stir the pot but a ladle is usually provided for the soup. Sukiyaki is not so different from shabu-shabu but it is considered a sweeter version whereas shabu-shabu is savory.

3. Yakiniku Restaurant
The yakiniku restaurant is another cook-it-yourself setup where you usually order raw ingredients like slices of beef or chicken or onions and other vegetables so don’t panic when they serve you raw food. Yakiniku literally translates to grilled food which is why you’ll find a small grill right on the table top where you can grill your food to the doneness that you want.

The yakiniku experience can be fun but it can also be a little intimidating. Don’t be afraid to ask for assistance in turning on the grill. You will be using long chopsticks, usually metal, to place and turn the food on the grill. You can see right away why knowing how to handle a pair of chopsticks can be both fun and important.

Yakiniku restaurants also often offer signature sauces so don’t be afraid to try them.


4. Tempura Restaurant 
In most Japanese restaurants, you’ll find that tempura, usually prawn tempura, is served as a side dish but there are also restaurants menus that are designed around these battered and deep-fried food. While prawn tempura is the most common, you can cook just about anything as tempura; even beef!

Take note that panko or Japanese breadcrumbs aren’t used for tempura. Instead, a mixture of low-gluten flour and potato starch or cornstarch is mixed with water to create a batter that comes out crispy and thick when deep-fried.


Tempura is also traditionally served with a light soy and ginger sauce. In Japan, tempura is considered expensive fare which is why people sometimes opt for the more affordable tendon option instead. Tendon is basically a set of tempura (prawn, vegetables, etc.) served as toppings on a rice bowl.

5. Izakaya
The izakaya is less of a restaurant and more of a pub. It is essentially a drinking place but still comes with a few signature dishes. In Japanese, izakaya is actually a combination of two words which are ‘stay’ and ‘sake shop’ (sake is Japanese rice wine).

Izakaya dining is usually very slow paced and, unlike in other Japanese restaurants, everyone usually splits the bill (remember, etiquette dictates that whoever invited everyone pays). In these Japanese watering holes, what you’ll usually get are snacks on small plates. The Japanese usually start with the milder flavoured selections like edamame, those small green beans that stands in for peanuts, and sushi. As the drinking progresses, they move on to karaage (deep fried, ginger-flavored chicken) or yakitori (grilled meat on a stick).

Another thing that makes the izakaya different is that you can actually get a bit of everything in terms of food. You might find sushi, yakitori, gyoza, okonomiyaki, or maybe even a few rice dishes or bowls of noodles.

An izakaya can also be called akachochin or red lantern but this nickname has now become reserved for those that aren’t part of big izakaya-chains or small, hole-in-the-wall kinds of places.

6. Teppanyaki Restaurant
Teppanyaki restaurants use an iron griddle to cook food but it’s nothing like those iron griddles that you might see at some American diners. The teppanyaki iron griddles are usually built onto the tables and can be very long, sometimes encompassing the entire length of a bar-type table. This is so all the cooking can be done in front of the guests.

Cooking teppanyaki today has actually become about the performance as well as the delicious food with experienced teppanyaki cooks doing tricks and tosses to impress the crowd. They might juggle utensils, flip food, or toss eggs and crack them mid-air.

7. Kushiage Restaurant
Kushiage is all about serving deep fried goodness on a stick. Also known as kushikatsu, this type of Japanese restaurant serves a wide selection of chicken, pork, seafood, and vegetables that have been breaded with panko, deep fried, and served with house sauces. When serving the kushiage, some chefs will point the end of the bamboo skewer towards the sauce it’s meant to be eaten with or away from the sauces if it should be eaten by itself.

You can probably tell just by the food that a kushiage is also a good place to have some drinks. A lot of these places also serve takoyaki which are savory balls of pan-fried batter filled with vegetables and octopus as well as okonomiyaki which is a savory pan cake often topped with pickles, cabbage, some form of protein like chicken or pork, and sometimes even bacon.

The Shinsekai neighborhood of Osaka, Japan is particularly known for their kushiage (along with its fugu  or toxic puffer fish restaurants).


8. Karei Raisu
Karei Raisu is just curry rice but spoken in typical Japanese fashion and this restaurant serves exactly what with variations of what goes into the curry. It can be a curry of ground pork and vegetables or it can be bite-sized cuts of beef or even breaded and deep fried chicken cutlets served with curry, all served with rice.

While the idea may seem simple, I would urge you to try an order of karei raisu for yourself; it doesn’t even matter what kind. Japanese curry is infused with a lot of spices and flavors and is a lot subtler but also more flavorful than its Western and even other Asian counterparts. It is also often served spicy but most Karei Raisu restaurants let you request the level of heat that you like.

9. Teishoku Restaurant

A teishoku restaurant serves set meals which is usually made up of a main dish like chicken or pork and a bowl of rice, pickles, miso soup, and maybe a piece of gyoza. Teishoku dining is popular among the working class, especially for lunch when they’re looking for a full meal for the rest of the day.

Eating at a teishoku restaurant is a good way to get the bang for your buck since they’re usually affordable and basically offer a no muss, no fuss kind of meal. But make no mistake; there are a lot of good teishoku finds. Being typically Japanese, they wouldn’t dream of cutting corners and still use the best ingredients they can get their hands on.

10. Yoshokuya Restaurant
The yoshokuya restaurant is a relatively new addition to the rest of the line-up – it is basically a restaurant that serves yoshoku food which is what the Japanese call western-style cooked food. But before you start thinking of McDonald’s or meatloaf, the menu for a yoshokuya is still very Japanese but heavily influenced by the West.

Some of the food you’ll find in a yoshoku joint are the katsudon (a breaded and deep-fried pork cutlet cooked in a mirin, dashi, and egg liquid and served on top of rice), korroke (croquettes), and hayashi rice (a beef, onions, and button mushroom stew in demi-glace sauce served with rice).

If you’re looking for something familiar but still has that distinct Japanese touch, a yoshokuya is what you’re looking for.

11. Kaiseki Restaurant
Kaiseki dining may be the most interesting type of restaurant offering in this list but it is also possibly the most intimidating. To call it a formal affair is an understatement; it features the most meticulously and elaborately prepared Japanese dishes. Not surprisingly, it is also the most expensive. More than being a fine dining experience, kaiseki actually stems from the imperial-style dining of early Japan.

A kaiseki meal is a mutli-course meal, with the number of courses reaching as much as fourteen but no less than seven. The food presentation is guided by Japanese aesthetics and the dish selection is guided by seasonality and locality. You will be hard pressed to find a kaiseki menu that has been repeated, even by the same chef.

The complete kaiseki courses are the following:

·         Sakizuke, an appetizer, usually bite-sized and similar to an hors d’oeuvre.

·         Hassun is made up of several small dishes and may come with one piece of sushi.

·         Mukozuke is the sashimi course which are slices of raw fish or seafood.

·         Takiawase is the vegetable course served with fish, meat, or tofu.

·         Futamono translates to ‘lidded dish’ and is usually a soup (served with a lid, of course).

·         Yakimono is a grilled or flame-broiled dish, usually fish.

·         Su-zakana is a palate cleanser and is usually a small dish of vegetables marinated in vinegar.

·         Hiyashi-bachi is a course that is only served in summer and includes lightly flavoured, chilled vegetables.

·         Naka-choko is another palate cleanser, often in the form of a soup with an acidic component.

·         Shiizakana is the heavier course of the meal. It is a hot pot dish and can be anything from beef to lobster.

·         Gohan translates to rice. This course is a rice dish featuring seasonal ingredients.

·         Ko no mono features seasonal pickled vegetables, often an integral part of any Japanese meal.

·         Tome-wan is made up of a miso-based soup and a rice bowl, served to make sure that you’re not still hungry. People often eat this course very lightly because the different courses can be very filling.

·         Mizumono is the dessert course and usually features a seasonal fruit, confection, or ice cream.

Dining kaiseki is a good opportunity to refresh all of the chopsticks etiquette that you learned in the previous chapter. Believe me, it’s all going to be called for. Still, the chef and servers are going to take into account that you’re not as experienced in Japanese-style fine dining as the local residents would be, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared. It’s also a chance to show off some of the skills you’ve learned on how to use chopsticks!

This is an excerpt from the book: How to Use Chopsticks