Eating

Here belong Robatayaki restaurants where traditionally dressed waiters shout out orders to cooks behind the counter. Their main dishes are from fish and barbecued veggies. Robatayaki relate to yakitori restaurants featuring veggie and chicken pieces roasted on small bamboo rods above carbons.

Yakitori places are sooner nomiya - snack bars easily spotted by their red paper lanterns on entry. Nomiya with a wider menu (fish, yakitori, pot-stewed veggies and even some European dishes) become izakaya. Such restaurants seldom disappoint with their quality and prices.

Noodles is a major Japanese food widespread in 2 sorts - soba and thicker udon. Probably the most popular noodle dish is ramen, an originally Chinese soup. Fried (yakisoba, yakiudon) or in broth, noodles is served in both top-class restaurants and stand-up street snackbars.

Soba restaurants also cook cold noodles, zaru soba - it's dipped in soya sauce with wasabi and spring onions. Noodles is often cooked as teppanyaki on a red-hot griddle right on the table opposite a client. So cooked is delicious and inexpensive okonomiyaki, sometimes called "Japanese pizza". These are usually pieces of seafood or pork mixed with a pastry of eggs, water, flour, and shredded cabbage to be fried as flat cakes.

Okonomiyaki, noodles and yakitori are sold by street outlets yatai. Their most popular dish is oden, various foodstuffs including fish cakes and eggs boiled in fish broth.