Japanese restaurants

The Japanese prefer to spend their free time relaxing with friends in clubs, pubs and restaurants. The country is rich in such institutions, which are very crowded in the evening. In big cities there even are entertainment districts, full of bars, pubs, discos, clubs. They say, that more then million restaurants, cafes, snack bars of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, European cuisines account for 127 million of inhabitants. It is possible to find the Japanese restaurant by the short linen curtain with the family coat of arms of the owner on it. Blue curtain means that the restaurant is opened for visitors.

The most visited restaurants and snack bars are as usual situated near the offices in city shops and department stores. They are rather popular in Japan because office workers visit them during the lunch. The typical set meal, so called tajseku, in Japan consists of fried fish, rice, light soup and marinated vegetables.

For that in hurry the best possible variant is tatigui - something like our snack bars, the main difference is that instead of usual for us dishes, in Japan they propose the noodle soup. Tatigui are dispersed all over the city, mainly in places where many people gather together: near the metro stations and railway stations.

The Japanese sort of cafe, very popular among women, is called kamykissa. Traditionally there they propose to the guest green Japanese tea, otja. One should drink it with small gulps without milk, sugar or lemon. If the visitor is offered a cup covered with lid, decencies demand he should take it away, turn over and put it on the table to the right of the cup. Usually they drink tea with fruit jelly, which comes with bamboo sticks for eating the delicacy.

Together with traditional restaurants there are special places, visited by people, who like pungent feelings. These want to enrich their menu with something really special, for example, to eat the most dangerous delicacy in Japan - fugu.

Japanese cuisine is full of rituals, that's why the head-cook (patae) conforming them, is obliged to somehow challenge the guest: he must propose to taste the poisoned fish dish. The rest of the visitors are the audience of this uncommon play, they wait for the denouement of the seen - will the guest accept the challenge? Is he going to order fugu?

To become a fugu cooking master one must pass a national exam and take a scientific degree in "Harmonius Fugu Association", where people are being thought how to prepare fugu in a right way to make it less toxic. Nevertheless, yearly almost 300 people die because of this mortal dish.