10 Japanese Food You Must Try in Japan! By Local

05/24/2025

As Japanese, I have a ton of food that I want to recommend you to try in Japan not to keep eating Mcdonalds or any other fast food that you can eat anywhere, here are “Top 10 Japanese food” I picked for you to try 🙂

*Noted : This article is including meat, fish, veggies and etc. Not particularly for a vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, etc.

TOC

Sushi – Japanese Food You Should Try

Needless to say, Sushi might be the most famous Japanese food in the world.

I hope you’d try even if you tried before in other countries or you didn’t like it unless you don’t have allergies or impossible to eat raw fish physically.

Nigiri

Outside Japan, I have seen so many kinds of sushi rolls though, you will not find any rolls like “California roll” in Japan. Basically, we have very simple rolls like “Kappa maki (cucumber roll)”, “Kanpyou maki”(raddish roll), and so on.

Most of places, you will see they have Nigiri, and I would like you to try them.

Salmon, Maguro (tuna), Hamachi (yellowtail) might be easy to try.

Kaiten Sushi (belt conveyer)

There are also a lot of Kaiten sushi restaurants in Japan. The range of price is pretty wide, actually.

My favorite Kaiten sushi place is called “Midori Sushi” where you can have a good quality of sushi with a bit cheap price. And it is a kind of a casual restaurant so that you don’t need to worry about manners for sushi that much.

If you’d like to eat sushi without spending much money, you can try 100 yen/plate sushi places without high expectation.

Sashimi

If you are on your diet, or you don’t want to eat carbs, then you can just try Sashimi. You can taste of fish itself from Sashimi. Some of you might feel it’s strong taste, but I hope you enjoy fresh raw fish in japan.

Wagyu Beef – Japanese Beef

In my opinion, Japanese wagyu is the BEST!!!! You should try a real one in Japan, not like “US-Wagyu” or something like that.

Wagyu Steak

Simply it is the best way to eat, don’t you agree with me? 😉 I personally love to go to the Teppanyaki restaurant (Hibachi restaurant, is that American often call it) at Westin Hotel in Ebisu. But just on special occasion since it is not cheap, of course.

Normally, just go to Wagyu restaurant for lunch. or Yakiniku (grilled meat) place, etc.

Niku sushi

Niku means “Meat”

I love Wagyu Niku sushi which is wagyu beef on top of rice (sushi style) instead of fish. Some places serve you a sliced of seared meat on top of rice, but others might serve you a raw beef on it. I wouldn’t recommend you to eat raw beef if you haven’t eaten it before, or you might get a stomachache or being sick.

Yakitori – Japanese Skewer Grill

Yakitori is similar to skewed BBQ.

Usually you can choose “Shio” or “Tare”. Shio means salt, so it’s simply seasoned with salt.

Tare means sauce, and this sauce shows each store’s uniqueness. At some places, it’s sweet, and more salty at other places, and etc.

I like to order “Shio”, but I’d try “Tare” when visiting new places.

Okonomiyaki – Cabbage Savory Pancake

This is a savory cabbage pancake originally from Hiroshima!

There are 2 types of Okonomiyaki in Japan, Hiroshima style and Osaka style. It’s nice to try both and decide which style you like, or just try one of them!

Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki

It’s layer of thin-batter, cabbage, other vegetables, pork (or shrimp, oyster, etc), noodle, egg, sauce..

Osaka style Okonomiyaki

They mix with batter and veggies before they cook, so it looks like a pancake. I personally like Hiroshima style though. Let me know which style you like if you have tried!

Tempura – Japanese Style Deep Fried Food

Tempura is Japanese style fries. It is actually from Portuguese. You can find Tempura of veggies like sweet potato, eggplant, kabocha(pumpkin), Shishito pepper (spicy green bell pepper), and also fish, most popularly shrimp.

It’s crispy outside, and you can enjoy a taste of each ingredients!

You can put some salt on tempura, or dip tempura into “Tsuyu (soup)” with graded Daikon radish.

You can also try “Tempura Soba” which comes with Soba noodle that I am going to introduce below.

Soba Noodle

Soba noodle is one of my favorite which i even eat a lot in US (im currently living in San Diego, CA, USA).

You can find soba noodle in a hot soup, or soba with dipping cold sauce in Japan. I eat hot one in winter, and cold one in summer.

Ramen – Popular Japanese Noodle Dish

It is also famous food all over the world. Originally from China, but it is completely different. Even inside of Japan, each region/area has different taste of soup, ingredients, noodle, and etc!

If you are ok with pork, I’d recommend you to try Ichiran since my friends from Taiwan, Germany, France, USA, etc loved it.

Food from Convenience Store – Konbini Food

Have you ever heard that Japanese convenience store is very different from ones in other countries?

I totally agree with that since I personally dont go to any convenience store in US without I have to for some reasons, and i miss them so much!

Although, I used to stop by those stores very often in Japan.. on my way home from station, for getting food for my lunch during work, running for printing some documents, paying bills, buying tickets, getting some cash from ATM and etc.

It is LITERARY convenience store for me!

Onigiri – Rice ball

It is a rice ball, and there are some without seawood around it in case you don’t like it. It is super easy to fill up your stomach,

Sandwich

My recommendation is Cutlet sandwich! Chicken or pork cutlet between thin bread. Generally, there are sauce, some lettuces, and mustard as well.

Sukiyaki

This is also famous I assume, but one of must try foods in Japan.

Some of you might be surprised, but we dip them into raw egg and eat. I wouldn’t recommend you if your stomach does not get used to do it, but it is super delicious. This is absolutely one of things that I always miss outside of Japan.