Japanese Language Stack Exchange
Japanese Language Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [food]

食べ物. Words and phrases for food and drinks or related to their preparation, consumption, tradition, and other aspects.

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Words/characters for fast food meal sizes: 並, 大, 特

When dining at Yoshinoya I never know how to ask for the size meal I want. Their sizes are 並, 大, and 特. I only know that "大" means big, but it also has two readings so I have no idea whether to ask for "dai" or "ooki". And since the word/character I…
hippietrail
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Most appropriate word for 'food'

I have seen many ways of saying 'food'. I am wondering if there is ever a difference in appropriateness. 食品、食べ物、～物(type+物)、飯、ご飯、etc. Most commonly, I think, is 食べ物, but I thought I'd use 食品 for an assignment involving 敬語（けいご）since it sounded more…
h4xnoodle
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What's the difference between "さけ" (sake) and "しゃけ" (shake)?

Today I saw onigiri claiming to contain "しゃけ" (shake). When I asked my friend what that was, she said it was the same as "さけ" (sake), "salmon". So are these two just different readings of a kanji, regional differences, used by different generations,…
hippietrail
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Since Japanese already had several words for rice why was "ライス" (raisu) borrowed from English?

Last night I had dinner in a ramen restaurant in northern Japan and was surprised to read the katakana "ライス" (raisu) on the menu. This is obviously the English word "rice" borrowed. But what kind of rice or method of preparation might it refer to…
hippietrail
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What's the difference between "gohan" and "meshi"?

In answer to my question on the difference between "gyūdon" and "gyūmeshi" I learned that "meshi" just means cooked rice. But I thought "gohan" meant cooked rice, so please, what is the difference? I do already know that "go-" is an honorific prefix…
hippietrail
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Differences between the many words for dinner

According to my dictionary, the following words all mean the same thing: "Dinner": [夜]{よる}ご[飯]{はん}, [晩]{ばん}ご[飯]{はん}, [晩飯]{ばんめし}, [晩食]{ばんしょく}, [夕]{ゆう}ご[飯]{はん}, [夕飯]{ゆうはん(ゆうめし)}, [夕食]{ゆうしょく} A similar thing goes for "Breakfast" ([朝]{あさ}ご[飯]{はん},…
小太郎
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Why are the names of plants and animals often written in katakana?

I was wondering why fruits, vegetables, animals and plants, are written in katakana? Often, there exist kanjis for those, so why aren't they written with those kanjis instead? For example: カマキリ instead of 蟷螂 ヒマワリ instead of 向日葵 シイタケ instead of…
Jaume
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Different conventions for animal meat

After reading this awesome question, I got to thinking about different animal meat. Upon researching a little, there seems to be different conventions in referring to different meats. Using 訓読み （鳥・鶏）肉　→　とりにく 豚肉　→　ぶたにく Using 音読み 牛肉　→　ぎゅうにく …
istrasci
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What is the etymology of [山葵]{わさび}?

I know that "わさび" 'wasabi' can also be written using kanji as "山葵" and that these two characters mean respectively "mountain" and "hollyhock", but hollyhock doesn't seem at first glance to be related. So are the hollyhock and wasabi plants related…
hippietrail
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Would I have 牛乳 or ミルク with my cereal?

I've just found out that there's a couple of words for milk, and that they have slightly different meanings. Which one would I have with my Weetbix in a "viking style" breakfast in Niseko? Based on the following links: JREF and Japan forum page 1…
Andrew Grimm
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How would you translate this? バタコチーズライス

So I'm working on translating a short recipe that I found online. The title calls it バタコチーズライス. I know that バタ is "butter", チーズ is "cheese", and ライス is "rice", but I can't for the life of me figure out what コ is doing in here. Is バタコ referring to…
Rachel
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What words are used for dolphin meat?

What words are used for dolphin meat? Searching jisho.org using "dolphin" in the English field listed several different words for dolphin, but no compounds involving meat. Neither the English nor the Japanese editions of Wikipedia have an entry…
Andrew Grimm
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On "おてもと" and its many variants for "chopsticks"

I've always known the Japanese word for "chopsticks" to be (お)箸{はし}. Today in my usual practice of reading everything around me I looked up what was written on the wrapper of the disposable chopsticks that came with my supermarket bento: おてもと I was…
hippietrail
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Onigiri and nigiri

I was reading this two articles: Onigiri wikipedia's article Nigiri explanation inside wikipedia's sushi article I first thought that onigiri was a type of sushi but it's not. It calls my attention how something with similar names mean something…
Macarse
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How to actually order fast food?

Alright I've been told so many different things on how to order, specifically fast food and for some reason I have never gotten a straight answer. The popular ones is to say ____をください or _____ お願いします. But when I was in Japan I never heard either of…
Kristine
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