Japanese Breakfast 朝食

JAPANESE FOODS

29.01.2021

What is breakfast like in your country? Do you eat bread? Fruit? Sometimes you might eat cereal?

In Japan, breakfast looks very different compared to some other countries. Japanese Breakfast often includes rice and a variety of small dishes. Let’s take a look at two different breakfasts in Japan. One is homemade and one is from a hotel.
This is a homemade Japanese breakfast.
Traditional Japanese breakfast would tend to complete 5 colors within the meal. For example, white, green, yellow, red and so on.
This ensures nutritional balance and makes food more appetizing, too.

There are a lot of options from this buffet breakfast in a hotel from Sendai. You could get rice and curry, you could get western style cereals and toast, or you could of course get a Japanese style breakfast. This Japanese breakfast includes miso soup, rice with natto, pumpkin salad, fried tofu, salmon, burdock root cooked with carrots, tamagoyaki, sausage, bacon, umeboshi, pickles, and a pumpkin pudding! Not all the food pictured here, there are so many options to choose from.
It is said that Japanese breakfast is good for health because it consists of a well-balanced variety of dishes that contain the necessary nutrition for the human body.
For example, carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, vitamins, and dietary fiber.

In ancient Japan, people used to think that breakfast provided us with a lot of energy to start a day. This might be one of the reasons that Japanese breakfast includes a wide variety of dishes all at once.

Fun fact:
There is a Japanese proverb, “Asa-Meshi-Mae.” The direct translation of this word is “before breakfast.” The meaning of this proverb is, “It is an easy task as I can manage it even before eating breakfast.” Proverbs are sometimes paradoxical. This proverb is no different in that way. Because breakfast is such an essential part of the day, there is an irony that a task could be completed before even eating breakfast.  Thus you may find how breakfast is an important part of Japanese life.