Food culture

Japanese cooking is built on a few fermented seasonings and a stock, だし, and its vocabulary follows suit: once 味噌(みそ), 醤油(しょうゆ) and だし are known, most menus make sense. Japanese also talks about food in terms English hardly uses — texture, 食感(しょっかん), is praised as often as flavour, and the season a food belongs to, its 旬(しゅん), matters as much as the recipe.