We cannot deny the fact that Japanese food has caught the world like crazy. We can find Japanese restaurants everywhere in any major towns or cities and they are not only meant for Japanese customer alone but Japanese food has found a place in other community just like any other Western, Indian or Chinese food.

My first taste of Japanese food was actually in Japan. Back then we did not have the luxury to eat at Japanese restaurants as there were very few back then. The name sushi and sashimi were just too foreign for me and my rough understanding was Japanese food is all about raw fish.

Nor do I understand why people like raw fish when it is so nice when fish are cooked or fried as what is usually done in other countries.

My first taste of a real Japanese food was a tempura set. Tempura as we know is a fried shrimps, cuttle fish and other vegetable fruits like okura. I was brought by a friend on the first I stepped foot on Tokyo to a Japanese restaurant as tempura was like the most acceptable food to a foreigner as it is not raw.

My first impression was that everything was done in a big serving. As a person who eat very little, a set lunch with a bowl of rice, a plate of fried tempura and a miso soup were just too much for me to finish. Everything was in a fixed size and put nicely on a tray.

I did not have a good impression with tempura and I found it was rather tasteless. But there are funny things about food and tempura became one of my favorite not too long after that.

Sushi and sashimi was a bit expensive for me at that time and I just indulged myself at the kaiten sushi and it was relatively cheap at about 200-400 yen for plate of sushi. Now whenever I take sushi I remember the good taste of the sushi in Japan. Even those from the Kaiten sushi are so much better.

It is hard to imagine that sashimi has become the most favorite Japanese food to foreigners all over the world. Thus it makes tuna and salmon fish to be among the most expensive fish that can reach thousands of dollars.

Not every food in Japan are that of raw fish. Many restaurants serve western food and Chinese food which to some may look like Japanese food. In the college restaurants we can find chicken cutlets rice, curry rice or char han which come together with miso soup and prepared in a very Japanese style.

Most of the time I had this type of food and they were not really expensive. As I did not have any handicap in the language, I did not have the problem reading the menu or ordering food.

Japanese ramen is a Chinese food that has settled very well in Japan and has become almost 100% Japanese as the taste is very much different of any noodles dishes serve in Chinese restaurant elsewhere. Everybody likes ramen in Japan and I was so surprise that the size of the bowl to serve ramen was so big and the quantity was enough for 2 people serving. But most Japanese people can finish the food serve to them. But at the same time we hardly see any Japanese people who are overweight.

As student we need to save a lot in Japan especially on food and we just take any kind of food which was affordable to us. Many students take bento from the bento shop. It is a packed Japanese food and it is cheaper than those serve in the stall. I remember one bento that has become my favorite that is the karaage bento or fried chicken bento.

Japanese drink a lot. I could hardly remember of the number of the brand names of beer in Japan. They come in different names like Asahi, Sapporo, Kirin and many more. In almost any dinner table a beer is almost a must.

In my next post I will touch a bit on the drinking session we used to have and how it was done back then.

In fact the first foreign country that I touched my feet on is Japan. From a small town in Malaysia and ended up in a big city like Tokyo was a bit of a shock for me. I did not know why but I took a very surprise decision that time that I want to go to Japan to study. Fortunately it was a very good decision as I learned a lot about the country and their culture and it was an experience that we cannot have it anywhere else.

About 20 years ago I took off to the land of the rising sun in an expectation to learn something with hope and big dreams. Little did I know that this country things can be very tough, a place where people only speak their own language and that was an immediate problem for many foreigners who first landed in Japan.

The language barrier

I stayed in the city of Tokyo a big city for a person who just hatched out from a small village and seeing people running around in hundreds and thousands was just something very shocking. Everything is in Japanese, the train station, the taxi and when ordering food are in Japanese. Luckily for me I picked up some basic Japanese and able to communicate in basic Japanese when ordering food or using the train service.

Now I am a Japanese speaker and speak the language fluently although it has been like 15 years I left the country. Japanese language is not that hard to learn especially when you are forced to use it daily, from the moment you wake up and turn on the TV, taking the train, read the newspaper, going to school, having lunch, school again and back home watching TV. All are done in Japanese. Sometimes people asked me if I even dream in Japanese or in my native language.

Many foreigners only need a month to understand the basic language if they attend some Japanese language school and a year to be able to speak and talk fluently with any Japanese. My Japanese was already very good during my second year stay in Tokyo. But even when we speak the language fluently, we will never be a Japanese or be part of their culture which so different and somehow I feel that non Japanese will never able to be part of it even if she or he tries to.

But many foreigners or gaijin speak very good Japanese and there are many who made appearance in TV shows and they speak and write Japanese as if it is their mother tongue.

Foreigners from different countries will also communicate in Japanese among foreigners. Even foreigners who know how to talk English will use Japanese as the primary language to communicate. After leaving Japan for more than 15 years now, I still can remember the language very well. I read the Japanese websites and listen to their music and TV shows. Maybe once you learned about something it is hard to forget about it, just like riding the bicycle.

I will write more about Japan and anything about Japanese the way I understand it in this blog and everything will be categorized at Japan for easy follow up. In my next writing I will write on Japanese people, the good and the bad part, the working culture, before and the present. I hope I can cover some on Japanese food which I believe is the favorite by many people in the world