Key Food Kanji

The key food kanji is listed just below the restaurant reservation form. 

Restaurant reservation aid: 
Printing and filling out this section may assist you in making reservations at places where you can visit beforehand.  Just be organized and ready to make it a smooth process for both parties.  If you are particular about smoking, you'll do yourself a favor asking if there is a non-smoking section.

予約 お願いします - Reservation please
月曜日 - Monday (circle your preferred day)
火曜日 - Tuesday
水曜日 - Wednesday
木曜日 - Thursday
金曜日 - Friday 
土曜日 - Saturday 
日曜日 - Sunday

_______人   Number of adults
_______子供 number of children 
子供年齢 _________ Children's age/s

__________時  Time of reservation
名前 _______________ Your name


禁煙区域　ありますか　do you have a no smoking section?
はい　yes
いいえ no
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Gurunavi also offers a free "booking agent" that operates from 10am-7pm.  You call them for reservation support in English. Their number is 050-2018-1384.  They can then make reservations for you at whatever restaurant you want.
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This is a set of the bare minimum food Kanji that will get you by on many menus:

チャンジャ　　Chanjya. Although not Kanji and not popular, this is on enough menus that I'm adding it here. It is salted fish guts. Many times served in Korean restaurants here in Japan and at enough Japanese ones too. Often served with a kimchi like sauce that is designed to mask all the undesirable thoughts one might have.  It may also go by "shio-kara" which is salted squid guts.



 Below is the back label from an instant ramen noodle cup. It has the standard food allergens that are recognized by Japan for labeling purposes. It's also a good little chart to use for common ingredients. You can see the beef, chicken and pork are written in kanji and you should be able to recognize those.

Below lets put to use the Key Food Kanji in some practical real life examples.

In the signboard below for a nearby shabu shabu place you can see both the tabehoudai and nomihoudai (食べ放題・飲み放題). There are 4 different types of meat for the tabehoudai and you can see that it's for 90 minutes. You can get the nomihoudai for an additional 1480Yen.
- You should be able to pick out the beef, meat, and pork kanji 牛　肉　豚
- Each offering has the katakana コース which is "course"
- Then you see two different prices for each course. One is for females　女性  and one is for males　男性. Because we all know that men eat more than women.  It would be good to learn male and female too as they are often used on bathroom door signs - go figure.

Below is one example of a lunch menu at a local restaurant. Half the menu is in kanji and the other in katakana. That means if you can figure out the katakana it'll translate into an American word and that's half the battle. The title says lunch menu, or, in Japanese syllables - ra n chi  me ni yu.

The first line - the key food kanji will not help you, but the kanji is "special made". The katakana though is beef tongue stew. be fu ta n shu chi yu. Got it?
Second line - special made beef stew
Third line - beef steak
Fourth line - hamburger steak
5th - chicken kanji and deep fried kanji. It ends with "negi (a type of onion) sauce (ソース）
6th - pork kanji and ro su (roast).
7th - shrimp kanji. The kata is macaroni gratin
8th - shrimp kanji. Kata is doria - which is a pilaf topped with a cheese based sauce then baked in oven
9th - ji ya n bo (jumbo) shrimp fu ra i (fry) (deep fried jumbo shrimp)
10th - you see the pork kanji, the yaki (baked) kanji and you see the "set meal" kanji
last line - sashimi and set meal kanjis
That's it. With katakana and the key food kanji you just figured out this entire food menu. Congrats!

Below is another random menu that I pulled from my photos and is a bit more complex.
This is a difficult menu to read because it is written in a freehand kind of hiragana and kanji. But see what you can figure out given the few Kanji above.
Even with just a little kanji knowledge and knowing your hiragana you can get an idea of what is on this menu. You'll be safe ordering the chicken karaage at least.

Probably best to skip down to the middle section. I have not tried to translate this menu fully. I've only used the Kanji presented above and a little bit of hiragana knowledge. 

Coupled with the Imiwa app as I outlined in the how to remember the kanji  tab, you will be able to figure out a lot more of these menu items.  You will figure out the hiragana items by going to the Imiwa app, typing in a search using the hiragana/katakana keyboard, and then seeing what comes up. 

For instance, the one in the middle of the page that is 650 Yen is "a sa ri ba ta." I notice "ba ta" is in katakana and "a sa ri" is in hiragana. So I search for "a sa ri" (this is actually what I type when using the hiragana keyboard, but without the spaces) and then hit search. It pulled up Manila Clams. Since katakana is for English words, "ba ta" likely means butter. Manila clams in butter. 





Here are the Imiwa app screenshots: 

 

  I only typed in "asa" so far and you can see that it already suggested asari in the middle left of the page. That section is where it provides predictions to help shorten your typing.

So select the asari (あさり) one on the left and hit the blue search button.

From the results screen it appears that Manila clams is probably the one we're looking for.

That's how easy it is.

By using the Kanji search tool I also found out that the 600 Yen one on the bottom is anago あなご　which is eel. And the last part is tempura. Eel tempura.

I also searched for the kanji in the one we identified as "deep fried something" (the 370 Yen one) and found out that it is Irish cobbler potatoes.

Given some time, you can figure all of these out. But with just the handful of Kanji presented above you can get a good idea about what is on most menus.