Japan's Izakaya & Night Food

About this book

Japan eats its most honest food after dark, in rooms lit by red lanterns. This book is the complete guide to that world.

200 entries in eight parts, each in one fixed format — Origins & Story, Taste & Technique, Where & When, and Manners & Enjoyment. The izakaya itself: the red lantern's promise, the otoshi that opens the night, bottle keep, standing bars and the thousand-yen senbero set. The drinks: sake warm and cold in its overflowing masu, shochu in its four cuts, the opening beer, highballs and sours. The dishes: yakitori salt or tare, sashimi as the kitchen's credential, the simmer pot that never empties, oden, nabe, and the closing bowl. Then the regions — Yurakucho under the tracks, Akabane, Osaka's Tenma and Kyoto's obanzai counters, Nagoya's miso belt, Kanazawa's oden, Fukuoka's pot-and-yatai nights, Kochi's bonito, Kagoshima's shochu, Okinawa's island taverns — and the late-night grammar of yokocho alleys, festival stalls, second parties and midnight ramen.

The 200 entries are items of izakaya and night-food culture, not shop reviews: no shop is ranked and no shop's prices or hours are asserted — shops change them; cultures endure. Japan's night markets are shown in their true form — alleys, festivals and late streets, not bazaars. A glossary and an index by part and theme close the book, so you can plan a journey by lantern instead of by map.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.