Seafood on the Street: The "Fishy but Delishy" Side of Japan's Street Food Culture>

I'm seeing these terms a lot in my research. You may want to remember them.

Basic terms^1,2

Dashi: (だし/出汁) Soup stock, broth, usually made from a combination of fish flakes and seaweed.
Shouyu: (しょうゆ/醬油) Soy sauce. Easy.
Mirin: (みりん/味醂) Sweet, lower-alcohol rice wine. Used in sauces, glazes and broths.
Sake: (さけ/酒) Another type of rice-wine. Cooking sake is lower-grade than normal sake. (Incidentally, Meiko likes it!)
Miso: (みそ/味噌) Fermented soybean paste made by growing a fungus Japanese people call koji (used to ferment sake and rice vinegar too) on a grain, like rice, and then fermenting the soybeans with it to create a deep meaty flavor as the amino acids in them break down. Longer fermentation makes the miso darker (goes from white to red to black) and richer. More koji sweetens the miso.
Nori: (のり/海苔) Edible seaweed.
Ponzu: (ポンズ/ポン酢) A citrus sauce.
Teppan: (てっぱん/鉄板): A metal cooking griddle.

Proteins^3,10

Salmon in Japanese is called sake (さけ/鮭). Not to be confused with the wine!
Tuna is called maguro (まぐろ/鮪). Just in case you didn't know, it's a *big* fish. (All I knew about it was that it was a fatty fish that tastes good, haha.) (Luka likes it!) Ahi (Hawaiian name, Japanese is kihada, キハダ)⁹ is a grade of yellowfin tuna.)
Yellowtail, also known as amberjack, is called buri (ぶり/鰤). It's a big fish.
Mackerel is called saba (さば/鯖). It's oily and fatty, but in a good way.
Freshwater eel is called unagi (うなぎ/鰻). It's traditionally grilled over charcoal.
Octopus is called tako (たこ). A taco, as in the Mexican food, is actually タコス (takosu) in Japanese.
Squid is ika (イカ).
Salmon roe (eggs) is ikura (イクラ). Should you ever find yourself needing to ask the price of salmon roe in Japanese, you can simply say Ikura wa ikura? (イクラはいくら。).
Dipping sauce is tare (タレ/垂れ).

Okay, now that that's over with, let's get to the fun part!

Sushi⁴

Sushi!! (すし/寿司). You may think I'm going crazy. "I go into a restaurant to eat sushi; that's not street food." But at one point, it was.

To preserve fish, Southeast Asian rice farmers in about 400 BC stuffed them with cooked rice and let them ferment about a year. Initially, they just threw out the rice and ate only the fish, but then as the idea spread into Japan, the people there figured "Why not eat the rice as well? It lends a nice…uh, sour taste to the fish." (Don't blame me if you're confused why you'd deliberately want to eat something sour, that's just what the source says!) This was the earliest type of sushi, known as narezushi. (Sushi, by the way, means sour rice.) Then around the 1600s, the fermentation process was sped up with vinegar and at this point curing was cut down to a number of days. Sugar and salt were also added to the rice. Then, this quick fish dish—say that 5 times fast–became popular in Tokyo (historically called Edo until the emperor moved the capital there from Kyoto, another large city, in 1868. Toukyou とうきょう/東京 means "eastern capital"⁵) as fast food. Then nigirizushi was invented in the early 1800s. A slice of fish over hand-packed rice, it was a nice portable munchie. As time went on, more fillings were added in, like ocean fish, and sushi became a little more luxurious. Then after WWII, sushi decided to roll indoors. Everything seemed all right, but then a bone-chilling wind blew in from the east. A refrigerated wind. Never mind, no worries, this is a good thing actually! It makes the sushi last longer, and now people were able to can serve raw fish. Sushi came to America early in its history, but really hit its swing there with Noritoshi Kanai's Kawafuku restaurant in '66, which first introduced it to diners.

Americans have kind of gotten sushi upside down and backwards. The California roll, a fusion of imitation crab meat, avocado and cream cheese, is a concoction completely different from traditional sushi. And no one's quite sure who invented it.

A Tale of Three Tales. Who Created It?⁶

Claimant	Location	Restaurant	More
Ichiro Mashita	Los Angeles, CA	Tokyo Kaikan	Avocado replaces fatty tuna and crab (later cheapened to imitation crab only) is added for a nice seafood flavor.
Ken Seusa	Los Angeles, CA (Tokyo, Japan)	Kin Jo (Fuzushi Rop-pongi)	Once a sushi chef at the famous Rop-Pongi in Tokyo, he was a mad scientist with his flavor choices.
Hidekazu Tojo	Vancouver, Canada	Tojo's Restaurant	Dungeness crab, avacado, spinach, egg, and sesame seeds were the original ingredients in this version of the famous roll, served uramaki so Canadian customers would not be grossed out by seaweed. First called the Inside-Out Roll, now the Tojo Maki.

There are a lot of different types⁷. To make things a little more interesting for you readers, let's have them be listed from "most like traditional American sushi" to "what is this???".

Romanized name (English script)	Literal meaning	Japanese name (Hiragana/+Kanji)	What is it exactly?	I need a visual!
Uramaki	Inside-out roll	うらまき/裏巻き	The type of sushi you know and love. That is, if you have any taste (buds) 😉. Has the rice on the outside, seaweed hidden on the inside, which is the opposite of how it's "supposed" to go. That's right. Sushi usually has seaweed on the outside!	You can probably imagine what this looks like.
Nigiri	Two fingers (i.e. length)	にぎり/握り	Not to be confused with onigiri aka musubi. Those are stuffed rice balls, and I'll actually talk about them later. Instead, this is a little rice patty with wasabi covered in a slice of fish and sometimes bound together with nori. A bite-sized snack! Did you know? Most Japanese people eat sushi with their hands and in one bite—that is perfectly okay!¹¹	You can probably imagine what this looks like.
Sashimi	Pierced…body? 😱	さしみ/刺身	Someone forgot to put any rice on this nigiri. Just fish.	You can probably imagine what this looks like.
Norimaki/more specifically makizushi	Seaweed roll/rolled sushi	のりまき/海苔巻き, まきずし/巻き寿司	The OG^? sushi, seaweed on the outside, rice on the inside.	You can probably imagine what this looks like.
Hakozushi	Box sushi	はこずし/箱寿司	This sushi is squishi! Ingredients are pressed into a rectangular shape.	You can probably imagine what this looks like.
Temaki	Hand roll	てまき/手巻	A big, handheld cone-shaped foodstuff with sushi-stuff inside and nori outside.	¹⁹
Chirashizushi	Scattered sushi	ちらしずし/ちらし寿司	It's sushi if you made it, well, not a roll, and put all the ingredients in a bowl instead.	⁸

Green: You've probably seen this before Yellow: Well, this is interesting Pink: Definitely not a California roll

Bento

Seafood can figure prominently in another popular Japanese food you've probably heard of, bento (bentou, べんとう, 弁当; etym. from Mandarin biàndāng, 便当, convenient). Bento is used to refer to both specialized Japanese lunch containers and the meals within them. Such meals center around a grain (rice/noodles) and some proteins (fish/meat/eggs), and it's not rare to get that protein through sushi. There are also veggies and fruit. I could write a whole other webpage with the amount of information I've found on bento, but suffice it to say there are many styles, like kyaraben (キャラべん/キャラ弁), "character bento" that play on pop culture references; oekakiben (おえかきべん/お絵描き弁) that "paint" pictures using the food, aisai bentou (あいさいべんとう/愛妻弁当) specially designed for loved ones, or even shiekashiben (しえかしべん/紫衣歌詞弁) that you can make for people you're mad at, deliberately designed to gross people out or taste bad! I wonder, is that last one best served cold?¹²

There are other even stranger seafoods lurking deliciously in the streets of Japan. Would you take the leap and try a few?

Popular dishes

Onigiri: (おにぎり), or omusubi (おむすび). These 🍙. Little cone-shaped rice snacks wrapped in nori, filled with perhaps fish like tuna or salmon, or pickled plums, called umeboshi (うめぼし/梅干し). (Apparently ume fruits, the plumlike drupes used to make umeboshi, are apricot-like but sour?) The source says onigiri can also be filled with…boiled kelp. Well, don't knock it till you've tried it, I suppose!
Takoyaki: (たこやき/たこ焼き). Remember how I told you octopus was tako in Japanese? Well, take that tako, yaki (Japanese, means "fry" or "grill") it, deep-style in a special pan, and you get takoyaki, fried octopus balls. You may recognize that "yaki" part from other Japanese loanwords, like yakisoba (fried wheat noodles in broth made from dashi, shouyu, and mirin, often topped with scallions), teriyaki ("shine (from tare)"+yaki), and teppanyaki ("a hot plate set at the table's center, with fish, meat and vegetables grilled by a teppan [circular grill]"), like those things they have at K-Pot). My source claims that sometimes they'll put an entire baby octopus in each one, though, which is a bit sad. It sounds delicious, though! Below, I've included footage¹⁹ I found of a master making over a hundred in only about ten minutes! It is truly a magical sight to behold, though I'm a fan of cooking and baking that takes its time as well. Not to say that knowing this craft so intimately isn't impressive, and doesn't take time. But it's okay if you're a cook and you're slower at it. For something that tasty-looking, I can wait! Send me some? 🥺👉🏻👈🏻

Okonomiyaki: (おこのみやき/お好み焼き). Roughly translatable as "whatever you like, grilled"—there's that yaki word again. Dough flavored with seasonings and herbs is piled high with various foodstuffs, like a pizza, and indeed with the same eye for experimentation topping-wise (which you may find distasteful if you hate Hawaiian-style). Alongside meats and cheese, you may also find squid, noodles, and cabbage on the grill! Anyway, these ingredients are either mixed into, or layered on top of the batter.
Ikayaki: (いかやき/いか焼き). Grilled shouyu-slathered squid meat on a skewer, you say? Well, I'll try anything once—let's see if there's reason behind their love for it in Osaka (a city in south Japan). The entire squid torso can also be grilled and cut into rings, as another way to prepare this dish.¹⁷

Okonomiyaki.²⁰

Well, is it? I'd want the octopus to have a chance at a happy life first…^{Images from 14,15,16}

I never thought I'd find myself craving squid, yet here we are. Come to Papa!^{17 again.}

Unique fare

These next foods get even crazier; they aren't just delicacies to foreigners, but to Japanese people as well.

Have you ever seen that early Simpsons episode where Homer eats some sketchy fugu (ふぐ/河豚)? Well, he was taking quite the gamble indeed—tetrodotoxin, which is found in the pufferfish's liver and ovaries, and especially in the popularly used "tiger fugu" species, is a neurotoxin up to 1,200 times more potent than cyanide! Quite annoying to be struck down with that stuff when you're just trying to enjoy some expertly made fish. So, should you ever want to sample this fare, which is, according to the source, "sweet and chewy", make sure the chef knows what they're doing—and doesn't have a secret ulterior motive to "deep six" you.¹⁸ Did you know? You need to be specially certified to prepare fugu in Japan.

Seafood on the Street: The "Fishy but Delishy" Side of Japan's Street Food Culture

Terms that you'll want to keep track of

Basic terms^1,2

Proteins^3,10

Stuff that the average otherwise-clueless foreigner (me) already might know about?? but now have some more information

Sushi⁴

Bento

Other more curious things¹³

Popular dishes

Unique fare

Sources

Seafood on the Street: The "Fishy but Delishy" Side of Japan's Street Food Culture

Terms that you'll want to keep track of

Basic terms1,2

Proteins3,10

Stuff that the average otherwise-clueless foreigner (me) already might know about?? but now have some more information

Sushi4

Bento

Other more curious things13

Popular dishes

Unique fare

Sources

Basic terms^1,2

Proteins^3,10

Sushi⁴

Other more curious things¹³