Japanese vocabulary · 27 words
Japanese food and drink vocabulary
Food is where most learners first get to use Japanese, at a restaurant, a shop or a friend's table. These are the food and drink words from the course, with the verbs and adjectives you need to talk about them.
Examples are written in kana. New to it? Start with the hiragana chart.
Good to know
- ごはん means cooked rice and also a meal. あさごはん is breakfast and ばんごはん is dinner.
- Loanwords like コーヒー, ジュース and ラーメン are written in katakana.
- The thing you eat or drink takes を: すしを たべる, みずを のむ.
Food
| Japanese | Kanji | Romaji | Meaning | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ごはん | ご飯 | gohan | cooked rice, meal | |
| こめ | kome | rice (uncooked) | ||
| パン | pan | bread | ||
| すし | 寿司 | sushi | Sushi | |
| ラーメン | raamen | Ramen | ||
| にく | 肉 | niku | meat | |
| とりにく | とり肉 | toriniku | chicken | |
| さかな | 魚 | sakana | fish | |
| たまご | 卵 | tamago | egg | |
| やさい | 野菜 | yasai | vegetable | |
| くだもの | 果物 | kudamono | fruit | |
| ケーキ | keeki | cake |
Drinks
| Japanese | Kanji | Romaji | Meaning | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| みず | 水 | mizu | water | |
| おちゃ | お茶 | ocha | green tea | |
| コーヒー | koohii | coffee | ||
| ジュース | juusu | Juice | ||
| ぎゅうにゅう | 牛乳 | gyuunyuu | milk | |
| ビール | biiru | beer | ||
| のみもの | 飲み物 | nomimono | a drink |
Meals and places
| Japanese | Kanji | Romaji | Meaning | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| しょくじ | shokuji | meal | ||
| ばんごはん | 晩ご飯 | bangohan | dinner | |
| きっさてん | 喫茶店 | kissaten | coffee shop |
Talking about food
| Japanese | Kanji | Romaji | Meaning | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| たべる | 食べる | taberu | to eat | |
| のむ | 飲む | nomu | to drink | |
| たべます | tabemasu | eat | ||
| のみます | nomimasu | drink | ||
| おいしい | oishii | delicious |
Practice this in Open Lingo
This page comes from the Open Lingo course. In the app it is a short interactive lesson with listening, speaking and spaced-repetition review. Free, and no account needed to try it.
Keep going
- The particle をHow the Japanese particle を (o) marks the thing a verb acts on, why it is written wo but said o, and how it fits Japanese word order.
- NumbersJapanese numbers for beginners: Sino-Japanese いち, に, さん, the native ひとつ, ふたつ counting set, and hundreds, thousands and 万, with audio.
- Katakana chartAll 46 basic katakana plus voiced and yōon combinations, with romaji, stroke-order diagrams, example loanwords and audio.