How to Read a Japanese Menu, Handwritten Blackboards Included
- Japanese menus share a skeleton: category headings, dish line, price line. Learn the skeleton and you can navigate a menu you cannot fully read.
- The price line carries more information than the price: tax wording, market price, portion size and whether a set comes with rice and soup.
- The handwritten blackboard by the door is where the day's best food is, and it is the hardest thing on the table for any camera translator.
You do not need to learn Japanese to order well in Japan. You need to recognise about thirty characters and understand how a menu is laid out, and this guide gives you both, including the handwritten specials board that most guides quietly skip.
Four kinds of menu, four levels of difficulty
Before you read anything, work out what you are looking at.
- Photo menus, common in chains and tourist areas. Easiest: point and order.
- Plastic food replicas in the window, still widespread. As japan-guide notes, you can literally take the staff outside and point at the dish.
- Printed text menus, vertical or horizontal, often with no pictures. This is where character recognition pays off.
- Handwritten boards and paper strips with the day's dishes. This is the real food, and the hardest to read.
Every menu has the same skeleton
Dishes are grouped by cooking method or base ingredient, not by course. Once you spot the headings, you can jump straight to the section you want.
| Heading | Reading | What is under it |
|---|---|---|
| お品書き / メニュー | oshinagaki / menyu | the menu itself |
| 焼き物 / 串焼き | yakimono / kushiyaki | grilled dishes, skewers |
| 揚げ物 | agemono | fried food, tempura, karaage |
| 麺類 | menrui | noodles: ramen, udon, soba |
| ご飯物 / 丼 | gohanmono / donburi | rice dishes and rice bowls |
| 刺身 / 海鮮 | sashimi / kaisen | raw fish and seafood |
| 一品料理 | ippin ryori | small single dishes to share |
| お飲み物 / ドリンク | onomimono / dorinku | drinks |
Reading the price line
The line with the number tells you more than the cost. Since 1 April 2021 prices shown to consumers must include consumption tax, an obligation the National Tax Agency calls sogaku hyoji, so the figure on the menu is normally what you pay.
| On the menu | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 円 / ¥ | en | yen |
| 税込 | zeikomi | tax included |
| 税抜 / 本体価格 | zeinuki / hontai kakaku | tax not included: the bill will be higher |
| 時価 | jika | market price, changes daily. Ask before ordering |
| 六〇〇 / 一二〇〇 | roppyaku / sen nihyaku | 600 and 1,200 written in kanji numerals |
| 半額 | hangaku | half price |
If a menu shows two prices for the same item, it is not a mistake: eating in is taxed at 10% and taking away at the reduced 8% rate, so cafes and convenience stores print both.
Portion and set words that change what arrives
These few characters decide whether you get a bowl of noodles or a full tray with rice, soup and pickles.
- 定食 (teishoku): set meal, main dish plus rice and miso soup.
- 単品 (tanpin) vs セット (setto): the dish alone, or the dish with sides.
- 大盛り / 並 / 小盛 (omori / nami / komori): large, regular, small portion.
- 替玉 (kaedama): a second helping of noodles added to the broth you still have, typical in Hakata-style ramen.
- おかわり自由 (okawari jiyu): free refills, usually of rice.
- 食べ放題 / 飲み放題 (tabehodai / nomihodai): all you can eat or drink, nearly always with a time limit written in minutes (分).
- 一人前 (ichininmae): one serving, the price is per person.
The handwritten blackboard: why your camera app gives up
The specials are written by hand, often vertically, read top to bottom and right to left, in fast cursive that compresses strokes. Prices appear as kanji numerals, dishes are abbreviated, and the same character can look different in two lines written by the same person. General-purpose translation apps were trained on printed text and typically return nonsense or nothing at all.
This is exactly the case kanji was built for: photograph the board and it reads it line by line, prices included, in your language. Look for 本日のおすすめ (today's recommendations), 日替わり (today's changing dish), 数量限定 (limited quantity) and 売り切れ (sold out) on the board itself.
Five traps worth knowing
- 辛口 (karakuchi) on a sake list means dry, not spicy. Spicy food is 辛い (karai) or 旨辛 (umakara).
- 生 is draft when attached to beer (生ビール) and raw when attached to food (生もの).
- お通し (otoshi) is the small appetiser that arrives unordered at an izakaya, and it is charged per person: the Gurunavi explainer covers why.
- たれ or 塩 (tare or shio): with yakitori you will be asked to choose sauce or salt. Either answer is correct.
- 現金のみ (genkin nomi): cash only. Worth reading before you sit down.
What to ask, in Japanese
| English | Japanese | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Do you have an English menu? | 英語のメニューはありますか | eigo no menyu wa arimasu ka |
| What is this? | これは何ですか | kore wa nan desu ka |
| Does this contain wheat? | 小麦は入っていますか | komugi wa haitte imasu ka |
| What do you recommend? | おすすめは何ですか | osusume wa nan desu ka |
| The bill, please | お会計お願いします | okaikei onegaishimasu |
Let the camera do the reading
kanji is the glacom.AI app for this exact moment: point it at a menu, a sign or a label and it reads and translates it line by line, prices included. It is built for handwritten menus, the ones generic translators fail on, and it includes a travel assistant plus ready-made questions in Japanese you can show to the staff.
Honestly: it is an AI service and it can be wrong, so anything that matters - allergens above all - should be confirmed with the staff. It is free, has no ads, and runs on servers in Europe under GDPR.
- Android: get kanji on Google Play
- iPhone and iPad: get kanji on the App Store
You can browse real menus and signs read by the community before you fly.
Frequently asked questions
- How can I read a Japanese menu without knowing Japanese?
- Start with the category headings (grilled, fried, noodles, rice), then the price line, then the portion words. Roughly thirty characters cover most menus, and a camera translator handles the rest.
- What does 時価 mean on a Japanese menu?
- Jika means market price: the dish is priced daily, typically seafood. Ask the staff for today's price before ordering.
- Why are there two prices for the same item?
- Eating in is taxed at 10% and takeaway at the reduced 8% rate, so many shops print both figures for the same product.
- Are handwritten Japanese menus really harder to translate?
- Yes. They are cursive, often vertical, and use abbreviations and kanji numerals, so tools trained on printed text frequently fail on them.