As I sit here enjoying a lovely Saturday lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant in Kanda, Tokyo it occurs to me that writing a post on useful restaurant words in Japanese could benefit travelers coming to the Land of the Rising Sun. Note: This is not eloquent Japanese, rather it is designed to be easy and useful!

One of the biggest barriers to entry for me when I first moved to Japan and couldn’t read Kanji (or hell, even Katakana) was the menu.  You look at a page full of gibberish and it can make you want to just leave and go somewhere familiar where you can easily pick out what you want to eat… did I see a McDonalds back there?  Thankfully, you aren’t alone here and often restaurants will have an English, or at least a Picture menu (possibly outside to attract customers).  Don’t be ashamed!  You can ask for them with the phrases below:

May I please have an English menu = Eigo no menu kudasai

and

May I please have a picture menu = shashin no menu kudasai

That wasn’t so hard right?  If they have the menus, yokatta! You are in luck, it should be easy from here, simply point to what you want from the menu and say:

I’ll have this please = Kore o kudasai

Vietnamese Resturant's Picture Menu

If not, don’t fret!  This is where the true adventure begins.  You could of course say:

Do you have any recommendations? = Osusume wa?

and I will give you some key words to help you here at the bottom of this post,  but if you are feeling bold, I suggest you go with one of my favorite Japanese words: Omakase.  Omakase literally means something along the lines of “Please be kind to me” but it basically is like saying, “your call, please try your best to bring me something I like.”  The added bonus to using this word is that the Japanese will often think (and sometimes even say) “why the hell does this gaijin know omakase?”  No need to worry, the Japanese are usually quite nice and upstanding and they will often really try to bring you what they think is best, not just bring you the most expensive thing on the menu!

Another big plus about restaurant Japanese, they often keep a lot of the original words (for example, today I am eating Pho Ga (Fa- gwa I think?) which I believe is pretty similar to the original Vietnamese.  They also understand and use words like rice, soup, spoon, fork, table etc. so, if you are desperate, its worth it to try your English slowly and you may get lucky and hit a bull’s eye!

When the food comes, here are a few key words, oishii and oishisou, which mean delicious and looks delicious respectively.  These are particularly important if you used Omakasei to show your appreciation of the food they selected for you.

A couple other useful phrases you might want to use:

May I please have a Beer/Wine/Water  = (Beer/Wine/Mizu) kudasai

and

May I please have 1/2/3 more = Mou hitotsu/futatsu/mitsu kudasai

Don’t be embarrassed to use hand gestures (especially for numbers) to accomplish your task here

Now the time has come, you have to pay.  A quick note here, in Japan, unlike the US, oftentimes you will not pay at your table and have to take the receipt (usually left on the table somewhere) and go to the register and pay.   Occasionally this will not be the case or you may need to call your waiter/waitress with:

check please! = okanjou onegai shimasu

But lets face facts, you’ve just eaten a nice meal, and you may be a little tired (or tispy ;-P) and not feel like subjecting your poor waiter/waitress to anymore of your Japanese… don’t worry!  I got you covered!

In the US, if you want to let your server know you a ready to pay, you can simply make a signal with your hand where you are signing a fake receipt in the air, meaning “Check please!”

Well, the Japanese also have a similar signal.  If you catch their eye and cross your two index fingers together to form a little T (or a cross) in the air, and I feel it is a pretty close translation of the above hand gesture

Lastly, you can thank your server (and oftentimes the chef too) with the phrases.

Thank you, it was delicous = Arigatou oishikatta

or

Go chi so sama deshita (often abbreviated to, go so sama)

Go chi so sama deshita means something along the lines of “Thank you for this feast” or “Thank you for the treat.”  It is said to the server and/or the chef, but also, if someone pays for your meal, its is the polite way to thank them in Japanese.

One last note, remember, in Japan, tipping is not necessary.  That being said, it never hurts Full disclosure, my cheap ass stopped tipping after the first 2-3 months, its really not necessary most of the time, and the smallest bills available are 1000 yen (more than 10 bucks!) and you don’t want to give them just change right?  Thats kinda insulting…

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post, I will upload the videos and some pics from this meal shortly, as well as write an auxiliary post that will just have the key words (as well as some extra ones not here) and less chat from me so you can conveniently print it and take it with you.

Happy exploratory eating!  Ganbatte!