Japanese Food Trivia
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57 free Japanese Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Japanese cuisine, washoku, has been on UNESCO's Intangible Heritage list since 2013, and there is far more to it than sushi. This quiz covers the staples and the science: rice and the 'one soup, three sides' meal, dashi and the discovery of umami, miso and soy sauce and the mould that makes both, sake brewing, matcha and the tea ceremony, sashimi, tempura's Portuguese roots and the four wagyu breeds. It also covers everything people actually queue for: ramen and tonkotsu, udon and soba, okonomiyaki and takoyaki, yakitori, tonkatsu and katsu curry, gyoza, sukiyaki and shabu-shabu, onigiri and bento, natto, mochi and wagashi, taiyaki, dorayaki, anpan and melonpan, plus fugu licences, conveyor-belt sushi, Tsukiji and Toyosu, Momofuku Ando's instant noodles, Cup Noodles, Pocky, Ramune, Japanese whisky and the Kit Kats students take into exams. Questions run from easy (what tempura is) to expert (the Scottish pharmacist who invented Ramune). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Japanese cuisine and its dishes, drinks, ingredients and brands, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our sushi, Japan and world food quizzes next.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Traditional Japanese cuisine, built on rice and seasonal ingredients, is known by what name?
Washoku
Washoku joined UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2013, honoured not as a set of recipes but as a social custom tied to the seasons and festivals.
Q 02The phrase ichijū-sansai, describing a typical Japanese meal, means what?
One soup, three sides
One soup, three sides echoes the trays of formal honzen banquets, yet the phrase now describes everyday home meals, whatever the dishes.
Q 03Raw fish is optional, so what is the one defining ingredient of sushi?
Vinegared rice
Vinegared rice arose when Edo-period cooks mixed vinegar in to give the rice a sour taste, so sushi no longer had to wait to ferment.
Q 04Yoshiaki Shiraishi got the idea for kaiten-zushi, sushi that circulates past diners, from watching what?
Beer bottles on a brewery conveyor
Beer bottles on a brewery conveyor gave Yoshiaki Shiraishi the idea while he was struggling to staff his small Osaka sushi bar and serve customers cheaply.
Q 05What does the word sashimi literally mean?
Pierced body
Pierced body is the literal meaning, and the name isn't reserved for fish: horse meat, yuba and konnyaku are all served as sashimi too.
Q 06Ramen's alkaline wheat noodles trace back to which community in Japan?
Yokohama Chinatown
Yokohama Chinatown supplied the Cantonese cooks for Rairaiken, the 1910 Tokyo shop often called Japan's first ramen restaurant.
Q 07Tonkotsu ramen, invented in Kurume in 1937, has a broth based on what?
Pork bones
Pork bones boiled hard make the milky broth, which began by accident when a Kurume cook's stock was left on high heat too long and turned cloudy.
Q 08Tempura arrived in Japan in the 16th century thanks to which visitors?
Portuguese Jesuits
Portuguese Jesuits get the credit, and Nagasaki's early batter held sugar and sake, so tempura was first eaten without any dipping sauce.
Q 09Miso and soy sauce are made by fermenting soybeans with which fungus?
Aspergillus oryzae
Aspergillus oryzae, known as kōji mould, releases enzymes that break the beans' starch and protein down into sugars and amino acids.
Q 10Dashi, the stock at the base of miso soup, is most commonly made from kombu kelp and shavings of what?
Katsuobushi
Kombu's glutamates and katsuobushi's inosinate combine into a synergy of umami.
Q 11The smoked, fermented, rock-hard fish shaved into bonito flakes is made from which species?
Skipjack tuna
Skipjack tuna fillets are smoked for weeks and cured with mould, and smoke residues above EU limits have kept many of these flakes off European shelves.
Q 12While studying kombu broth, the Tokyo chemist Kikunae Ikeda identified and named which taste?
Umami
Umami was Ikeda's name for the savoury taste of glutamate, and he patented a seasoning made from it that went on sale as Ajinomoto.
Q 13Which slimy, smelly breakfast food is made from soybeans fermented with Bacillus subtilis?
Natto
Natto was made by wrapping boiled soybeans in rice straw, whose own bacteria did the fermenting, until a lab-grown starter let factories skip the straw in the Taishō era.
Q 21Soy sauce, the salty fermented condiment, first developed in which country?
China
China is where soy sauce began, descended from jiang, pastes first made by salting meat and fish before vegetarian versions took over.
Q 22On the midsummer Day of the Ox, what do Japanese people traditionally eat to beat the heat?
Eel
Eel, unagi, is said to suit an old belief that foods starting with 'u' are good to eat on the Day of the Ox.
Q 23Mochi is made by pounding what?
Glutinous rice
Glutinous rice has almost no amylose, only amylopectin, the sticky kind of starch, which is why pounded mochi turns so stretchy.
Q 14Genuine Kobe beef must come from the Tajima strain of Japanese Black cattle raised in which prefecture?
Hyōgo
The animals must also be heifers or steers and be processed at one of five approved slaughterhouses.
Q 15Matcha gets its bright green colour from what?
Shade-growing the tea plants
Shade-growing the tea plants makes the leaves build extra chlorophyll and about twice sencha's amino acids, which is why good matcha tastes mellow.
Q 16With a bowl of tea, the monk Eisai treated a shogun for what?
A hangover
A hangover had laid shogun Minamoto no Sanetomo low, so Eisai brought tea as medicine, along with his book praising tea's health benefits.
Q 17Despite being called rice wine, sake is made by a process more like brewing what?
Beer
Beer is the closer cousin, since both need grain starch turned into sugar, but sake converts and ferments in the same tank at once, reaching about 20% alcohol.
Q 18Before brewing, sake rice is polished to remove what?
The bran
The bran comes away with the germ and outer layers, whose fats and proteins give sake off-flavours, so the top grades mill away the most.
Q 19Kagoshima's signature shōchū is distilled mainly from what?
Sweet potatoes
Sweet potatoes thrive in Kagoshima's fast-draining shirasu soil, which suits rice poorly, so the crop became the base of the local spirit.
Q 20Most 'wasabi' served outside Japan is actually a mix of horseradish, mustard, starch and what?
Green food colouring
Real wasabi is a difficult, water-hungry crop, so growers cannot meet demand and it stays expensive.
Q 24Onigiri are traditionally filled with salted salmon or what pickled fruit?
Umeboshi
Umeboshi's salt and citric acid help stop food spoiling, which made them the classic filling for rice balls carried as travel and battlefield food.
Q 25Soba noodles are made from which flour?
Buckwheat
Buckwheat noodles snap easily, so soba eaten on New Year's Eve is said to cut away the past year's hardships.
Q 26Fried chicken from which chain has become a Christmas tradition in Japan?
KFC
KFC's chicken, in one telling, first stood in for a Christmas turkey, and its 'Kentucky for Christmas' ads made the meal a national custom.
Q 27Okonomiyaki, the savoury griddle pancake, has two main regional styles from Kansai and which city?
Hiroshima
Hiroshima's style layers batter, cabbage, pork and noodles instead of mixing them, and griddle pancakes like it spread after WWII, when rice was scarce.
Q 28Takoyaki, the ball-shaped Osaka snack cooked in a moulded pan, is filled with what?
Octopus
Octopus came from Akashi's egg-rich snack, which the Osaka vendor Tomekichi Endo combined with the beef-filled radio-yaki to create takoyaki in 1935.
Q 29Yakitori literally means what?
Grilled bird
Grilled bird is the literal meaning, yet the name is often stretched to cover skewers of pork, beef offal and vegetables too.
Q 30Tonkatsu, curry rice and korokke are classics of which Western-inspired Japanese cuisine?
Yōshoku
Yōshoku grew after the Meiji government promoted eating meat to build bigger bodies, ending a long avoidance of red meat.