If you have a chance to come to Japan for a trip, you might wonder what kind of food Japanese people are eating and what food choice is available in the morning in Japan.
There is an image of a traditional Japanese breakfast, but it seems difficult for non-Japanese people to guess what Japanese actually eat in the morning.
Also, you could possibly wonder whether there is a restaurant which serve breakfast in Japan.
In this article, I will cover the following matters.
- Do Japanese eat breakfast?
- What do Japanese eat in the morning
- What is Japanese traditional breakfast
- Restaurants for breakfast in Japan
After reading this article, I hope you overall understand Japanese breakfast, have an image of what to eat in the morning and enjoy your trip to Japan.
Let me introduce myself.
I am Hiro from Tokyo, Japan, and I was born and raised here.
Do Japanese eat breakfast?
According to a poll in 2019 (1,000 Japanese answered) by a company called ibridge, 66.6% of Japanese eat breakfast every day and 15.9% of Japanese don’t eat breakfast at all. (Rest of them sometimes eat breakfast.)
Especially, young generations such as those 20s tend not to have breakfast sometimes or always because some of them are just lazy (could be away from parents in their early 20s and no one complains about their unhealthy eating customs) or others are on a diet.
Obviously, it is not good for your health if you skip breakfast, but being young, people care less about it.
When I was 10s and 20s I always had breakfast in the morning because without eating it, I couldn’t concentrate on studying and easily get sleepy in the afternoon, but my younger brother tended to skip breakfast because he rather wanted to sleep more in the morning.
Reference:
What do Japnese eat in the morning
According to the above same research, the ratio of Japanese eating breakfast is as follows.
| Food | percentage |
| Only rice (e.g. rice ball) | 9.5% |
| Rice with other dishes | 27.9% |
| Only bread | 28.8% |
| Bread with other dishes | 19.1% |
| Vegetable and fruit | 3.1% |
| Cereal | 4.9% |
| Yoghurt | 3.9% |
Japanese often argue about which bread or rice to eat for breakfast and based on the above result, bread eater (47.9%) is more than rice eater (37.4%).
I personally love to eat rice with dishes, however, my wife and my mother in law rather love to eat bread in the morning.
What is traditional Japanese breakfast
Typical Japanese traditional food includes rice, miso (bean) soup, and 3 types of side dishes (e.g. fish, meat, egg, veritable)
It is said that Japanese breakfast is rather healthy and nutritious because various types of menu are combined and you can take carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, vitamins, dietary fibre, etc.
Some menus are salted and others are not enough salty at all, and by a combination of each dish, you may feel suited and enjoy a Japanese traditional breakfast.
However, making such a traditional Japanese breakfast is hard early in the morning if they work full-time, so many Japanese just have simple meals such as bread.
My family (me, my wife, my mother-in-law and my daughter) often eat what we are for dinner in the morning which is much more efficient rather than making breakfast from the beginning.
Restaurants for Breakfast in Japan
Compared to other Asian countries, it is hard to find restaurants which serve breakfast in Japan.
We Japanese usually don’t go outside to have breakfast and instead have a meal at home.
If there is no food available for breakfast at home, we often go to a convenience store to buy bread or rice ball.
However, there are several restaurants which serve breakfast in Japan as well.
Gyudon (beef bowl) restaurants
Gyudon (beef bowl) is a bowl of rice topped with beef. There are several chain restaurants for Gyudon (e.g. Matsuya, Sukiya, Yoshinoya, etc.) and those restaurants usually serve Japanese breakfast (not only beef bowl choices).
Let me pick an example of “Sukiya” one of the popular beef bowl chain restaurants in Japan which is usually open 24 hours. (It depends on area.)
The restaurant offers a lot of menus for breakfast.
Korakuen (noodle soup restaurant)
Recently eating noodle soup is getting boomed in Japan (we call it Asara 朝ラー)and Japanese noodle soup chain restaurant offer noodle soup breakfast in the morning.
The noodle soup is soy source based and not oily and it tastes refreshing. It can be served together with rice porridge.
Komeda coffee cafe
If you still wish to eat bread for breakfast, Komeda coffee shop could be the best choice. Komeda Coffee offers a Nagoya-style toast breakfast which usually includes sweet red beans with coffee.
Also, if you order any drink in the morning (till 11 am), a toast or bread is included free of cost.
If you find Komeda Coffee cafe near your staying, please try.
Conclusion
In this article, I introduced what Japanese eat for breakfast and hope you understand it and have a good experience in Japan if you plan to come here.
Thank you for reading this article till the end.
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