Yes, you're right. But in the English translated menus, they would often write Japanese ravioli or Japanese dumpling next to gyozas.. I figured 'dumpling' was a silly name. Ravioli is so much better!

Ah, these gyozas are one of the many sweet memories I keep from a trip to Japan. What a place!

So with you on the sauce. When I was with my Korean girlfriend, I found mondu to be quite different flavor-wise. I think mondu tends to have different stuff in it, like cellophane noodles and some sort of herb or vegetation that made it different. Not my favorite, but still good. I'm pretty much obsessed with stuffed dumplings in all of it's forms from the pasties of northern Michigan, to Empenadas, to my beloved potstickers and gyoza.

Crap... Now I'm starving for some good dim sum.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I love gyoza. The secret is in the dipping sauce. I use equal parts sesame oil, ponzu and soy sauce.

I had the Korean version, mondu recently and couldn't tell much difference. So much "Japanese" food really comes from the mainland. (don't tell that to a proud Japanese person though

I could listen to this guy talk all day, and I could eat the gyoza all day too.

Glad to see you have an adventurous spirit, MG. Do you remember what was in the bento that you found so offensive? Was it animal, mineral or vegetable?

Japanese food falls into several categories. I'll list them starting with the most common/popular, to the highest cuisine styles.

1. Street food, including yakisoba, tako yaki (octopus in batter balls) and okonomi yaki (Cabbage pancakes), modan yaki, tai yaki (fish-shaped cakes filled with red beans) etc

2. Street-style bento/bowl food, including rice with seaweed and grilled salmon, chicken kara-age, gyudon (beef bowls) etc

3. Izakaya food (pub food), which is a bit like tapas, in that it's small plates of all kinds of interesting yummies, fried and otherwise. My favourite is grilled eggplant in soy sauce

4. Ramen noodle shops can range from the hole-in-the wall to more expensive restaurants, but are usually the kind of food you grab on-the-run, which is why Japanese love to slurp their ramen as fast as they can.

5. Chinese food, which is appropriated to the Japanese palate, like gyoza (fried dumplings), haru maki (spring rolls), cha han, mabo dofu (chili with tofu) etc

6. Pizza restaurants are very popular. You can sample very Japanese style pizzas, that have kim-chi (pickled cabbage) or kamaboko (fish cakes) on them. Some pasta restaurants can be quite classy, usually because they have a European trained chef.

7. Kateika which is home-cooked food, including grilled fish, like salmon and mackeral, rice, miso soup, nabe yaki (hot pots) vegie and rice dishes like gomoku gohan, curry rice, omu rice (a kind of omelette) etc


8. All-you-can-eat restaurants sell food like shabu shabu and suki yaki and are very popular, usually offer all-you-can drink as well.

9. Sushi, including sashimi and all the varieties of sushi. Some sushi places are VERY expensive.

10. Soba restaurants specialise in all kinds of traditional noodle dishes and can be quite revered for their particular style.

11. Kaiseki Ryori is high cuisine, serving some of the foods you would find in osechi ryori and include the food served at a ryokan (Inn), like clear soups with rare mountain vegies, sashimi and delicacies in seafood. We were teated to some kaiseki ryori last time we visited friends in Japan and my favourite was tiny slices of hard butter in between slivers of dried persimmon. It was delicious!

I've probably left some out, but there you have it. Even after you've lived in Japan for some time, it can be quite difficult to become comfortable with some of the high-end stuff, unless you have an absolute love of seafood in its simplest form, because the flavour is usually very subtle.

haha.. love it! ayaka's english is so old. who says 'i ate it' anymore. maybe it's coz she's from hawaii.

there's actually about 206 episodes of this featuring the members of japanese girl group, Morning Musume. what's with the chun li and gyoza tags?