Glossary of terms

THE TERMS NOTED here are those that have been mentioned in the text. The reader interested in a complete dictionary of Japanese food terms is directed to R. Hosking’s A Dictionary of Japanese Food, which is probably the most comprehensive source in English.

Term	Definition
aji	Horse mackerel. Trachurus symmetricus. Eaten raw or salt-grilled.
akagai	A small (30–40 cm long) fish. A shellfish; Anadara broughtonii. Commonly eaten as sushi.
ama ebi	Sweet shrimp. Pandalus borealis. A medium-sized crustacean eaten usually as sushi or sashimi. Flesh is translucent with a sweet edge to the flavour.
amazake	Sweet thin rice gruel with a low alcohol content sold hot. It is a common street food during festivals, and is also served at home during the Doll’s Festival.
an	A bean “jam” made of azuki beans boiled with sugar syrup, dark purple in colour. It is a major component of a great many Japanese sweetmeats.
awabi	Abalone. Nordotis sp. A large, fleshy mollusc caught off Japan’s seacoast by female divers called ama.
ayu	Sweetfish. Plecoglossus altivelis A small river fish. White fleshed with a delicate almost sweetish taste.
bakufu	The military government of the Shogun. Normally refers to the Tokugawa shogunate (1600–1868).
bentō	Box lunch in a compartmented tray. (See ekiben). There are hundreds, if not thousands of types. They normally contain cooked rice and a selection of okazu for which the bentō may be named. Some bentō have become special local products. Certainly, consuming bentō bought from a local station as the train passes through the countryside is one of the better ways to travel.
buri	Yellowtail. Seriola quinqeradiata Medium-sized fish of the jack family.
bushi	Warriors. The governing and military class in pre-modern Japan. The classes during late medieval (to 1868) times were caste-like. The bushi were the upper rung of society, responsible for defence and government. Samurai – the retainers/soldiers/administrators of baronial houses and the shogunal government – were all drawn from this class.
chawan	Literally tea bowl, it is used to refer to bowls for rice as well.
chawan mushi	A savoury custard of eggs and dashi with bits of seafood (usually prawn), mushrooms, gingko nuts, and trefoil (mitsuba), steamed and served in a small tea cup, hence the name, literally “tea cup steamed”.
[o]chazuke	Tea over rice. Originally, this was simply a way of finishing one’s bowl, by rinsing out the remaining rice grains with tea and drinking the lot. In a process of upgrading, this has become a style on its own, in which dashi flavoured with tea is poured over a bowl of rice, and various garnishes – umeboshi, fish, salmon-eggs, vegetables – arc added. As most styles do, there are specialist restaurants for the dish.
chirashi zushi	Mixed sushi. Flavoured rice is mixed with seafood and bits of nori and vegetables.
chorogi	Chinese artichoke. A small, crisp whorled tuber, shaped like the (old) Michelin man. Made into a pickle in the Tohoku area.
daikon	Giant radish. Long (20–50 cm) thick (2 – 10 cm) white roots. Raphanus sativus. Eaten grated raw for garnish with tetnpura, or cooked and pickled.
demae	Home delivery of food. Most low and middle range restaurants in Japan will deliver dishes to houses and offices. They will often circulate their menus to surrounding neighbourhoods. The food is delivered in the restaurant’s dishes, which, after the meal has been eaten, are left outside one’s door for later pickup.
[o]den	A stew of mainly vegetarian items (kamaboko, daikon, seaweed, konnyaku, potatoes) and boiled eggs simmered in a fish broth. Normally eaten off barrows that appear late at night around sakariba.
eda mame	Green soy-bean pods. Boiled briefly in salted water, they accompany beer and other drinks in summer.
Edokko	A resident of old Tokyo. Normally refers to members of working class families from the shitamachi (downtown! neighbourhoods of pre-modern Edo. They have a distinctive working class culture and ethic.
Edomaezushi	Edo-style sushi, in which raw or lightly cooked fish top a rice ball shaped by hand. This is what most non-Japanese think of when sushi is mentioned.
ekiben	A lunchbox (bentō) sold on trains or train stations in disposable containers. There are countless varieties featuring local specialities. Some of the famous ones are kamameshi (vegetable hotpot) bentō in a distinctive clay pot now supplanted by plastic, alas) and Kanazawa sushi. New varieties are being created all the time, the latest being paella bentō, bought at Tokyo station.
fu	Wheat gluten. Normally comes in the form of dried disks, which are resuscitated by hot water. Fu absorbs food dyes well, and is often used to fashion colourful symbols, such as those for New Year or Children’s Day.
fagu	Blowfish. A family of small fish (Tetraodontidae) caught off the Japanese coast. The liver is full of tetradotoxin. a nerve poison, traces of which exist throughout the flesh. Only specially trained cooks are allowed to prepare the fish, and their license must be prominently displayed. Contrary to opinion (at least outside Japan], few people have died from eating fugu in the past half century, and those who did ate the fish prepared by amateur cooks. The flesh, as sashitni, is a translucent delight.
fuki	Sweet coltsfoot or Japanese butterbur. Petasites japonicus, A long (to 150 cm) green stem topped by an umbrella-like broad (to 80 cm) leaf. The young stems arc peeled, parboiled, then used in aemono, sunomono, or for sweetmeats.
furikake	Garnish of dried ingredients, usually nori flakes and freeze-dried granules of fish stock, horseradish, or pickled plum, which is scattered over rice at breakfast or at the end of a meal, as a savoury. When hot green tea is poured over, the resulting dish is called ochazuke (q.v).
getemono	“Odd” foods, usually offal, that are eaten largely for supposed health benefits.
ginnan	Ginkgo nuts. The seeds of the gingko tree (Gingko biloba). Skewered and grilled, or cooked in chawan mushi (q.v.).
gobō	Burdock root. Arctium lappa. Treasured for its aromatic flavour and texture. Most popularly used in kimpira gobō: julienned gobō and carrots with sesame seeds.
gori	Sculpin. A river fish Cottus pollux. A small, rather ugly fish with a pleasantly flavoured white flesh, usually set in aspic.
[o]hagi	A sweetmeat made of grilled mochi (q.v.) coated with an (q.v.) bean “jam”.
hakusai	Chinese cabbage, Chinese leaf. Brassica rapa var pekinensis. Pale-green leafed, white stalked cabbage popularly used in pickles, hitashi, and aemono.
halohalo	Philippine sweet made of alternating layers of fresh and preserved tropical fruit, gelatine cubes, sweet red and white beans, topped with crushed ice, milk, custard, or ice cream, served in a tall parfait glass. Similar in concept to Japanese sweets mitsu mame and an mitsu.
hamachi	Young yellowtail. Seriola quinqueradiata. A fish of the jack family.
hamo	Conger-eel. Muraenesox cinereus. Usually served grilled.
harumaki	Spring rolls. Crisp fried rolls filled with cabbage, bean sprouts, and (sometimes) meat, flavoured with ginger and garlic.
hashi	Chopsticks.
hassun	A rectangular plate used mainly in presentation of kaiseki meals.
hata hata	Sandfish. Arctoscopus japonicus. A small fish popular in Akita prefecture; The flesh is somewhat dry. Eaten grilled or used to make shottsuru, (q.v.).
hirame	Flounder. Paralichthys olivaceus. Medium-sized flatfish prized for its delicate flavour and texture.
hiynyakko	A block of chilled tofu garnished with shavings of dried bonito, ginger, chopped green onion, and soy sauce. The same dish, served warm, is called yu-dōfu.
hōchō	General name for Japanese kitchen knives.
hokke	Atka mackerel. Plewogrammus azonus. A herring-sized fish with a somewhat oily texture. Served fried or grilled.
horumon	“Hormone” meaning offal meats: hearts, liver, lungs, spleen. These are usually “male” foods, served in drinking places either grilled or in motsunabe (innards slew).
hotate(gai)	Scallop. Patinopecten yessoensis. Versatile mollusc, eaten as sushi or sashimi, fried, steamed, butter fried, etc.
ichijū sansai	“One soup, three vegetables.” The (modern) standard meal structure of rice, soup, and three okazu dishes. The older standard was only one accompanying dish and soup: ichijū issai. Rice is taken for granted, only the variation in side-dishes is characterised.
imo	Generic name for many root vegetables including potatoes (jaga-imo), sweet potatoes (satsuma-imo), yams (yama-imo or yamato-imo) and taro (sato-imo).
irori	Hearth. Usually a square form of half a jo in size (90 x 90 cm) filled with sand on which charcoal is burned. Rural households had larger ones with a step for warming the sitters’ feet. Now, alas, not as common as they used to be, and totally absent in modern households.
ishigarei	Rock turbot. Kareus bicoloratus. A small delicate flatfish.
ito-uri	Spaghetti squash, Cucurbita pepo. A variety of squash whose flesh forms thin, long threads when ripe.
izakaya	Literally “sake shop”. A Japanese-style bar, usually with a mix of bar stools and Japanese tatami places for patrons. Izakaya normally try to convey a Japanese atmosphere in choice of food, drink, and decor.
jingizu-kan	A style of cooking in which thin slices of meat and vegetables are cooked on a domed rimmed griddle, each diner grilling his food for himself. Named because of the assumed resemblance to a Mongol warrior’s helmet, thus the Japanese pronunciation of Ghengis Khan.
kabocha	Japanese squash. Cucurbita moschata or C. maxima. Sweet orange flesh and green skin. Used in tempura, or steamed, candied.
kaiseki ryōri	Cuisine that accompanies the Tea ceremony. Now served on its own (i.e., without the tea ritual) as an elaborate, multi-course meal in restaurants.
kaki	Persimmon. Diospyros kaki. Orange fruit, with flattened, square shape and crisp, sweet flesh. Sold in the UK as “Sharon fruit.” Often sold in dried form in Japan whereupon it tastes somewhat like dried dates.
kakiage	A fritter. Usually of chopped vegetables and sea food in tempura.
kamaboko	Fish paste cake. Manufactured from the flesh of several kinds of white fish (cod, flatfish) to which starch and sometimes vegetable protein is added, moulded, and steamed. Normally moulded on a small wooden slab so that slices are demi-lune shaped. The convex side is often dyed pink or red. Kamaboko, like tofu, is extremely versatile, and is shaped, pressed, and cut into a variety of shapes. Each region processes kamaboko differently.
kami	The object of worship in Shinto. A deity. The divine.
Kansai	The area of Kyoto and Osaka. The word literally means “West of the Barrier (mountains along the Tokaidō coastal road).” Kansai cooking is characterised by the use of paler mho and sweeter seasoning.
kanten	A gelatine (agar agar) seaweed. It sets at room temperature, and much harder than animal-derived gelatines.
Kantō	The area of the plain surrounding and north of the present city of Tokyo. The word literally means “East of the Barrier (mountains along the Tōkaidō coastal road).” Its cooking is characterised by darker miso and saltier flavouring.
kara-age	Deep fried Chinese style. Before being dipped in batter, ingredients are dipped or marinated in a sauce of ginger and soy, sometimes wine. Sometimes the batter is flavoured instead. Usually refers to chicken cooked in this style.
karē-raisu	Curry rice. A dish of thick roux-based sauce flavoured with mild curry powder or cubes. It owes its origin to British expatriates in Yokohama and Kobe during the nineteenth century.
[o]kashi	Sweetmeats, confectionery. In conversation one might refer specifically to yōgashi (Western confectionery) or wagashi (Japanese confectionery). The latter are usually made on the basis of mochi (q.v.) and an (q.v.). Kanten jelly is used either on its own or as a binder for an.
kasutera	A sponge cake. Of Portuguese origin, the name derives from “Castilla”, ancient Spain. It has become a specialty of Nagasaki, Kyushu where Western cultural influences stretch back to the Portuguese arrival in the sixteenth century, and the Dutch factory in Deshima, the sole European outpost during the Edo-era.
katsuo	Bonito. Katsuwonus pelamis. Medium-sized variety of fish related to the tuna. This is, probably, the most important fish to Japanese cuisine. It is eaten as tataki (charred sashimi) and in a number of other forms, but its greatest use is for the making of katsuo-bushi from which most dashi are made.
katsuo bushi	Dried katsuo. The fillet of the fish is boiled, dried, smoked, fermented, then dried again to produce, after a year, a hard, woody object resembling a brown, petrified banana. This is shaved when needed (nowadays bought shaved), and the shavings steeped in hot water to make the basic stock used in Japanese cooking.
kegani	Hairy crab. Erimacrus isenbeckii. A heavy, thickset crab with hair-like protrusions over its shell and a delicate white flesh. It is a speciality of the northern seas around Hokkaido and considered a great delicacy.
kibi	Millet. Panicum milleaceum. Before the introduction of rice to Japan in proto-historic times, it was one of the mainstays of the population. Kibi offerings are still important in some Shinto shrines. For most modern Japanese it is memorable because Momotarō, the hero of a fairy-tale/ fable, took kibi dango (millet balls) along with him on his adventures.
kimchi	A spicy Korean pickle. A staple of Korean cooking, most often made of hakusai cabbage (q.v.), chilli peppers, salt and small shrimp. It has become a popular pickle in Japan as well.
kohada	Young gizzard-shad. Clupanodon punctatus. Lightly pickled, the fish is used in Edo sushi.
kompa	A drinking party. Normally accompanied by large masses of food.
konbu	A seaweed or sea-ribbon: a wide, thick strand (Undaria pinnatifida.sp. Laminaria). Usually sold dry. Soaked in water, it expands from a leathery, dry strip to a slippery thick vegetable strand with a strong sea smell. Used to make basic stock (dashi).
konnyaku	Devil’s tongue root. Amorphophallus konjac. It is made into a thick relatively hard jelly. Normally translucent grey with black specks, it can be dyed by the addition of nori to a bright green. Eaten as a vegetarian sashimi, or as an ingredient in oden.
konomi-yaki	Lit. “cook as you like it”: thin pancakes of vegetables and sea-food, cooked on a metal hot plate. An inexpensive food popular with students.
maguro	Tuna. Thunnus sp. A large fish most often eaten raw as sushi or sashimi. Because of the size of the fish (one to three meters), one rarely sees it whole except at the Tsukiji or similar wholesale fish markets. In the Edo period it was considered a low-class fish, but since then its star (and price) have risen in line with its growing rarity.
maki	A roll. A kind of sushi in which the rice is wrapped in a sheet of nori (q.v). The filling may be any fish such as maguro (q.v.), seafood or fresh or pickled vegetables. California maki of avocado and crabmeat, invented and popular in the West, is now also served in Japan.
maneki neko	A small (the largest we have seen was about 80 cm high) statue of a beckoning white cat with one paw upraised. This is supposed to draw in customers. It is a common decoration in the lobbies of restaurants, along with a picture or figurine of the shichifukujin (seven lucky gods).
matsutake	Pine mushroom. Armillaria matsudake. An expensive wild fungus that grows in pine forests. Comparable in price and esteem to truffles in French cooking. A single cap and stalk of matsutake can fetch 10,000 yen.
meibutsu	Lit. “famous things.” The special product of an area which travellers buy as presents to bring home. Many have been historically famous. In recent years, with the desire to differentiate communities and maintain their separate identities, new meibutsu have been created as marketing ploys, capitalising on real or created local resources.
menrui	Noodles. Generic name.
mirin	A sweet alcoholic liquor used only for cooking. Made from a mixture of alcohol from rice infected by a rice fungus (Aspergillus oryzae) and shochu, a sweet-potato derived spirit.
miso	Bean paste. A seasoning made by fermenting soy beans with a grain-carried fungi and salt. Used to flavour soups and other dishes, as a pickling medium, and for eating as moromi miso (q.v). Each region has its distinctive miso, either light or dark. Pale coloured miso is favoured in the Kansai region. It can take up to a year for miso to mature. Some miso, mixed with a heavy proportion of fermenting agent and grain, are ready in two weeks and have a sweetish flavour. Grains used can be rice, wheat or barley.
miso shiru	A soup based on a dashi (q.v.) base, which has been mixed with miso paste. Traditionally one blended several kinds of miso to achieve a preferred balance of flavours. Vegetables, small clams, and tofu are often added.
mitsuba	Trefoil. Cryptotaenia japonica. An aromatic leaf used commonly to flavour soups and custards. Sometimes called Japanese parsley in the West.
mizu-shobai	Lit. “water-business.” The entertainment and hospitality business including bars, restaurants, geisha and so on. The term derives from a Buddhist concept of the mundane world as a “floating” world, that is, transient and impermanent.
mochi	Glutinous rice, steamed, pounded, and shaped. Used as ritual offerings. A celebratory food. When mixed with sweetened beans or bean paste, forms the basis for Japanese sweets (wagashi).
monjya-yaki	A kind of konomiyaki (q.v.) that evoked in Tokyo during and after World War II. A thin batter mixed with vegetables, pickles, and sometimes meat or fish is fried on a metal griddle. The crust is scraped off periodically by the diners and eaten immediately. The name is said to derive from moji (letters), in reference to the batter which was so thin you could almost use it to write with.
montsuke	Dishing up, piling up: the arrangement of food on a plate or tray.
morohēya	Molokhia (Ar.) Corchorus olitorius. A green leaf, used in Egyptian, Middle Eastern, and Philippine cooking, valued as a thickener in soups. Became popular in Japan about 1996.
moromi miso	Dipping miso usually served with cucumbers as a sake accompaniment. Moromi is sake must or the solid mass from soy sauce making.
mugi	May refer to wheat or barley, though generally meaning barley. Mugicha is a refreshing infusion of roasted ground barley often drunk cold during the summer.
murasaki	Sushi terminology for soy sauce.
myōga	Japanese ginger. Zjngiber mioga. Buds and shoots are both eaten, though the root is inedible. The pink buds are used fresh, finely shredded, or both buds and shoots may be lightly vinegared. Its aroma is a lemony-fruity variant of the true ginger.
nanban	Southern barbarian (that is, European). Methods of cooking now associated with the southern island of Kyushu (where Europeans first landed in the sixteenth century). Nanbanzuke is escabeche, a marinade of vinegar, onion, sweet and chilli peppers in which fried fish is left to pickle for a few hours or more.
nashi	Asian pear. Pyrrus serotina. Crisper and juicier than its Western equivalent.
nasu	Eggplant, aubergine. The Japanese variety is smaller (about 15 cm or less, and about 5 cm thick), sweeter, and firmer than the Western equivalent. Some varieties are so sweet they can almost be eaten raw. A summer delicacy. Tempura-ed, stewed, grilled, also often pickled.
nata de coco	The result of fermenting coconut juice, which is then infected with a bacterium to create a curd. The curd is repeatedly scalded during processing, the end product is sweetened, and cut into small (1 cm) translucent, jelly-like cubes. Used in the Philippines as a sweetmeat or addition to tropical fruit salads. Became a fad food in Japan during the mid-90s.
natto	Beans fermented in a straw wrapping. A breakfast speciality of Eastern Japan. Also used in sushi rolls, miso soup and stews.
nigiri-zushi	“Squeezed” sushi. The type-model of sushi (at least for non-Japanese). A ball of lightly vinegared rice topped with a slice of raw or lightly cooked fish or seafood.
nimono	Simmered things. Vegetables and other foods simmered or poached in dashi (q.v.).
nori	Laver. Porphyra sp. Sheets of dried seaweed, shiny green-black in colour. Normally bought in standard-sized sheets. Toasted, they acquire a greeny-black colour. In sheets, nori is used to make maki (q.v.). Ajitsuke nori is flavoured nori individually packed for breakfast. Shredded, flaked or powdered nori is used as a garnish (see furikake).
nonmaki	A kind of sushi. A roll wrapped in nori (q.v.), filled with sushi rice together with fish or seafood or vegetable (such as cucumber). Shaped with a rolling mat (makisu). Cut into small, bite-sized cylinders and served cut-end up to reveal the colourful pattern made by the filling. Futomaki (lit. “fat rolls”) are rolls with more filling. Temaki are hand-rolled (i.e., without a mat) and are ice-cream cone-shaped. Other carbohydrates such as grated yam or noodles may be used instead of rice.
omuraisu	Omelette rice. A popular children’s food. Cooked rice is fried with ketchup, then enclosed in an omelette.
usaka-zushi	Osaka-style sushi. Sweetish vinegared rice, lightly pickled fish (usually mackerel [saba]) and pale coloured seaweed placed in a wooden mould, pressed and cut into rectangular blocks. Called saba zushi or battera, after the Portuguese term for “small boat”, which the mould resembles.
ponzu	Juice of a small bitter orange or citron, mixed with soy sauce. It is used as a dip or marinade.
rumen	Chinese style noodles. Usually made of wheat flour, thinly cut or hand-pulled. They arc a popular snack dish.
robata-yaki	A style of cooking in which fish, vegetables, and meat are grilled before the diner, often stuck on skewers which are placed vertically in a sand bed on which the coals glow.
ryōtei	A traditional form of eating place in which parties of diners eat in separate rooms, usually a table d’hote meal featuring seasonal delicacies in a series of courses at different price levels.
saba	Mackerel. Scombrina. Usually eaten salt-grilled, since this is a very oily fish, stewed in miso, or pickled in rice vinegar, e.g., shimesaba.
sakariba	Entertainment areas usually around commuter train stations. They have a high concentration of bars, coffee-shops, tea-houses, nightclubs and so on. Most sarariman stop at their favourite bar to unwind, and groups of sarariman often undergo bouts of bar-hopping within the same sakariba, which extend both horizontally and vertically onto several floors of buildings, both above and below ground.
sake	Liquor. In colloquial usage refers to nihon-shu (Japanese liquor), an alcoholic beverage pressed from rice that has been infected with a mould (Aspergillus oryzae). The resulting mash is pressed in bags, then filtered. This yields a natural “beer” of about 22%abv. By Japanese law, this is watered down to between 18.5 and 16.5%abv. There are numerous varieties, roughly falling into dry and sweet categories. Dry may be drunk cold, sweet is always drunk warm.
sake	Salmon. Traditionally this was salted (shiozake), then grilled for breakfast. It is more rarely prepared as sushi. There is also a thriving smoked salmon industry in northern Japan based on Scottish recipes. Pronounced “shake” in the Tokyo area.
sakoku	Lit. “closed country”. During most of the Edo-era, from 1637 to 1856, Japan was closed to foreigners, who, except for the Dutch at Dejima, Nagasaki, would be imprisoned upon landing. Japanese were forbidden to go abroad on pain of execution. This period of isolation did play an important part in keeping Japan free from European colonial domination.
sanbo	Raised footed trays used to present offerings in Shinto rituals.
sanma	Saury. Cololabis saira. A small, long and thin fish. Eaten in a variety of ways but more usually salt-grilled.
sanshō	Japanese pepper tree (prickly ash) Zanthoxylum piperitum. A very versatile spice. The young leaves, kinome, are used as garnish in Sashimi; in clear soups (as suikuchi, “aromatic sipper”) for spring kaiseki. The flowers, green and mature fruit, and bark are all used for flavouring. A tsukudani (soy sauce simmered savoury) of the leaves and fruit is a Kyoto speciality. The sanshō fruit’s most popular use is as a ground spice sprinkled on kabayaki eel. Closely related to Szechuan pepper, it is a component of seven-spice powder (shichimi togarashi).
sato imo	Taro. Colocasia antiquorum. A small (5 cm long) round root vegetable. Often appears in nimono.
sechi ryōri	The traditional foods for the New Year spiced sake (toso), soup with glutinous rice (zoni), and assorted boxed foods made well in advance. Colourful arrangements of (usually) cold food offered guests on the New Year. Red and white coloured foods, symbolic allusions predominate.
sekihan	Red rice. Rice that has been cooked with beans. The rice acquires a deep pink tint and rather stiff consistency. A traditional food marking auspicious occasions.
senbei	Crackers or biscuits. These are normally savoury but sometimes sweet. There are countless variations of shapes and flavours. Usually made of rice, some are famous regional specialities.
shiitake	Popular dark-brown tree mushrooms. Cortinellus shiitake. Widely used fresh or dried in stews, soups, hot-plate cooking, sukiyaki. Dried, it is reconstituted for making stock, especially in Buddhist vegetarian cooking.
shimeji	A smallish, white mushroom. Lyophyllum aggregatum. They are often a component of dishes such as nabemono stews.
shinmai	New rice. Rice newly harvested, which is considered particularly tasty. A major gourmet item.
shiruko	A sweet soup made of an poured over toasted mochi. One of the many popular okashi (q.v.).
shisō	Beefsteak plant, perilla. Perilla frutescens. The aromatic leaf looks like stinging nettle, but tastes slightly like basil. It comes in green (ao-jiso) and purple (aka-jiso) varieties. Both leaves and flower buds are eaten, often as garnishes to sushi and sashimi (q.v.).
[O]shōgatsu	New Year. The single most important event in the Japanese religious and secular calendar. Most shops and businesses close down for several days. Special foods – osechi ryōri – are prepared to offer to guests. Many households still maintain specific household rituals. In modern Japanese shōgatsu there is a mixture of elements, religious and secular, Japanese and Western.
shōjin ryōri	Buddhist vegetarian cooking. Designed to follow the strict rules of monastic sects, no foods of animal origin are allowed, not even eggs. Protein sources are nuts, wheat gluten and soybeans in various forms: miso bean paste, fresh bean curd (tofu), fresh and dried bean sheets (yuba), fried bean curd (abura age), freeze-dried bean curd (kōya dōfu). A lot of imagination goes into making even the simplest vegetarian meals.
shottsuru	A fish sauce made by fermenting small fishes such as sardines. An element in Akita and other northern prefectural cooking. In Edo period Japan it was as common as soy sauce as a condiment. It is similar to Southeast Asian fish sauces such as the Vietnamese nuoc-mam and Philippine patis.
shun	The perfect season for a given food.
soba	Buckwheat. Fagopyrum esculentum. A grain used in Japan mainly to manufacture noodles. By extension, even Chinese noodles, made of wheat flour, are called by the same name (e.g., chūka-soba).
sōsu	A contraction for oosta sōsu or Worcester Sauce. The Japanese version, however is thick and sweetish, somewhat like HP sauce. Used as a condiment for hanbāga and tankatsu (q.v.).
sunomono	Literally vinegared things. Foods that have been prepared by light salting and vinegaring, including fish, seafood, seaweeds, and vegetables.
sururne	Dried squid or cuttlefish. Normally eaten as otsumami (q.v.). It can be bought either whole, looking like a cardboard cutout of a squid, or shredded into strips.
suzuki	Sea bass. Percina. A white-fleshed medium-sized fish often served as sashimi.
tachiuo	Cutlass-fish. Trichiuridae. A long, vertically flattened fish looking somewhat like an eel.
taho	Very soft unmoulded tofu usually eaten with caramel syrup as a sweet snack. Philippine street/peddled food.
tai	Bream. Sparidae sp. Several species are eaten. Considered to be one of the most delicious of fish. The name “tai” is homonvmous with medetai (congratulations) and it is therefore the preferred fish for celebrations such as weddings.
takuan	Pickled daikon. This is one of the most common Japanese pickles, alas, in the modern world, often artificially dyed a vile yellow. Normally it is made by drying peeled daikon, which are then pickled in rice bran. In Northern Honshu (Akita) they are also smoked after pickling.
tamago zushi	Literally “egg” but in sushi it refers to a kind of sushi made of a thick, cooled omelette made with mirin (q.v.) so the end product is sweetish and moist. Edokko who are supposed to have a sweet tooth are particularly fond of this sushi, also called datemaki.
tarnari	A light soy sauce which is the residue of miso making. In traditional miso breweries, a pail with small holes was inserted into the miso and the liquid collected was sold separately as tamari.
tataki	To pound or chop. A method of preparation involving chopping, cutting into, or kneading vegetables, such as burdock root and cucumber, and marinading in ginger, sesame or vinegar. The same term refers to katsuo, beef fillets, and other fish/meat seared at high heat, leaving the centre raw, and seasoned with green onions, ginger, vinegar and soy sauce. A speciality of Tosa, a former clan on Shikoku Island, said to be derived from steak tartare.
tatami	Straw mats which floor traditional Japanese rooms. They are of standard size, usually 90 x 180 cm.
te-maki	A cone-shaped norimaki (q.v.). Nori is wrapped around sushi rice, a fish, seafood or vegetable filling, then rolled into a cone by hand. Fillings are similar to sushi toppings but include those that don’t hold their shape, e.g., pickled plum paste, perilla leaf, shredded raw squid, sea-urchin roe.
tempura	Deep fried, lightly battered vegetables and fish. Usually served with a sauce of soy, stock, grated ginger and grated radish, or plain/flavoured salt. May have originated in the Portuguese word “tempero” (condiments), or Spanish “tempora” (fasting food).
teppan	Griddle or iron plate. A flat metal surface heated for grilling (usually self-cooking) meat or vegetables. Small electric ones are a common utility in Japanese houses. May have originated from the practice of cooking food over heated flat stones.
tokonoma	The niche in a traditional Japanese room used for a restrained display of a seasonal flower arrangement, a scroll (determined, traditionally; by the owner’s mood and the occasion), or piece of pottery.
tonjiru	A miso soup based on a pork and vegetables stock. Normal accompaniment to tonkatsu (q.v.).
tonkatsu	Ton = pork and katsu = cutlet. Another importation from Europe. A slice of deep fried battered and crumbed pork. Normally served with finely shredded cabbage, mustard and some sōsu (q.v.). Accompaniments are pickles and tonjiru or miso soup. Yokohama claims to have developed tonkatsu from British expatriates’ pork cutlets.
toro	Tuna belly meat. Eaten exclusively as sushi or sashimi, it is softer, more delicately flavoured than the maguro cut. Containing more fat. its colour is pink, highly prized, and priced accordingly.
tororo	Grated yam (yamaimo q.v.).Other yams used are nagaimo and yamatoimo. A delicacy of mountain regions. A slightly astringent, frothy and “slippery” sauce added to soup or poured over rice.
tsukemono	literally “pickles” which hardly does justice to the concept. There are countless varieties, flavours, ingredients. Most commonly used are saké lees, miso, and salt fermentation for long pickles, and vinegar and/or just salt for short (one-hour or one-day) pickles. Traditional housewives took great pride in creating elaborate and complex tsukemono, e.g. stuffed pickled gourd with swirl-patterned, vari-coloured stuffing.
tsukudani	A savoury of vegetables (burdock root, mushrooms), seafood and small fish simmered down in soy sauce and sugar until almost caramelised. Often eaten as a breakfast or after-dinner (now rare) relish.
tsuhme	Balls of chicken meat or fish. May be simmered in stock, or grilled yakitori-style.
[o]sumami	Drinking foods. Snacks. These may range from peanuts and pickles, to elaborate concoctions of grilled food, fish, etc. Also called sake no sakana.
tsuruna	New Zealand spinach. Tetragonia expansa. Greens favoured for their delicate texture and flavour for soups, cooked salads (hitashi), stir-frying.
udo	A plant, both cultivated and wild, treasured for its crisp texture and distinctive flavour and scent. Aralia cordata. Invaluable in sunomono (vinegared salads) and nimono (stews).
udon	Wheat flour noodles, dried or fresh (te uchi “hand cut”). Names abound for variants of this noodle, distinguished only by their diameters. Himokawa (also called imokawa) udon are the thickest; less thick are Nagoya’s famed kishimen. Vermicelli-thin sōmen and the slightly thicker hiyamugi are summer treats, served chilled on ice and dipped in cold sauce, horseradish and chopped green onions. Udon’s capacity for absorbing flavours makes it ideal for long-simmered nikomi udon (simmered in flavourful stock) and table-top cooked nabeyaki udon.
umeboshi	Pickled “plums” (actually the fruit of the Japanese apricot Prunus mume). They are usually dull or bright red, more rarely dull green, the size of an olive or a quail’s egg. May be crisply-textured, or soft and mushy. In either case they are extremely salty. Used to make hinomaru bentō (Japanese flag lunchbox) where the umeboshi serves as the roundel in the middle of the white rice. Reputed to stop rice going bad, hence their inclusion in bentō.
uni	Sea urchin. Echinoidea sp. The gonads are eaten. They are a delicacy in sushi, an orangey yellow sweet cream that melts on the tongue. Also served steamed, preserved in salt or sake, used as a seasoning sauce or topping in aemono (salads flavoured with a thick, richly flavoured dressing, not vinegar).
wakame	A type of seaweed. Undaria pinnatifida. Mainly used to make dashi (q.v.) and as garnish, salads.
warabi	Fiddlehead ferns. Osmunda japonica or Ptendium aquilinum. One of the wild greens or mountain vegetables (sansai), though cultivated since the end of the Meiji period. Young shoots of a bracken pickled or scalded for stews, aemono (thickly dressed salads), and hitashi (cooked salad). The raw greens have to be soaked in lye or baking soda and rinsed thoroughly before using. Believed to contain a carcinogen, but at normal dietary amounts, considered safe.
wasabi	Japanese horseradish. Wasabia japonica. An essential flavouring in most sushi, its fiery effect is skull-tingling and nose-clearing. Usually comes as a green powder (sometimes adulterated with mustard) which is mixed with water to make a green paste. The grated plant root, where available, is more flavourful. It is alleged to prevent ptomaine poisoning as well.
yakimono	Roasted or grilled things. The word in Japanese subsumes a variety of cooking methods including grilling over charcoal, pan frying, and teppan (q.v.) grilling.
yakitori	Chicken bits – meat, gizzards, skin – and vegetables – sweet peppers, asparagus, mushrooms – on small skewers grilled over charcoal. A popular [o]tsumami (drinking food), it is also served on its own as a separate style in stalls and dedicated restaurants.
yamaimo	Mountain yam. Dioscorea esculenta. A large, broad root vegetable. One of several yams used to make tororo (q.v.).
yamamomo	Arbutus. Arbutus unedo. A small (2–3 cm) strawberry-coloured globular fruit full of sweet-sour juice. Grown mainly in Kochi and Tokushima (as well as China and Okinawa) but rarely seen in shops because it does not travel well.
yatai	A street stall. Most often, these sell foods, which may range from dishes of oden (q.v.) through sweets and candy apples.
yōkan	Jellied anko made with kudzu or some other gelling agent.
zōni	A vegetable soup based on dashi in which mochi balls have been floated. One of the three elements of osechi cuisine for the New Year. Most households have their own preferred recipe, and there are innumerable variations.