Japan Eats!: An Explorer’s Guide to Japanese Food

A playful illustrated introduction to Japanese food.

What’s uni and how do you eat it? What are ‘dancing shrimp’ or tako yaki? Do you pick it up with your fingers? Dip it in sauce? And just what is that sauce? From world-famous sushi to fatally attractive fugu, it’s all explained in this sketchbook of food adventures in Japan.

For the first-time visitor and gourmet alike, Japan Eats! is an entertaining guide to the pleasures and pitfalls of dining in Japan. Through full-color illustrations and casual language, author Betty Reynolds makes the intricate, and often confusing, process of eating in Japan accessible through tips not found in other books.

Whether it’s the proper technique for holding chopsticks or the etiquette of slurping soup, Japan Eats reassures the bewildered and includes mini-lessons on how to read the curtain at a restaurant entrance, the menu on the wall, and even the signs on the bathroom doors.