Izakaya Etiquette Made Easy
You sit down, someone drops a small dish in front of you that you did not order, and before you have even looked at the menu, a drink is expected. Welcome to the izakaya. It is not a restaurant in the way most travelers understand the word, and going in without any context means you will probably spend the first twenty minutes confused and the next hour too cautious to order the interesting things.
An izakaya is closer to a Japanese pub than anything else. The idea is to drink, eat small dishes slowly, and stay a while. The pace is different from a ramen shop or a sushi counter. Nobody is rushing you out. The food comes gradually, ordered in rounds, and the table tends to build up with little plates over the course of an evening.
That small dish that appeared without warning is called otoshi. It is a cover charge disguised as a snack, and every person at the table gets one. You pay for it whether you eat it or not. It is not negotiable and it is not a mistake. Usually it is something simple like pickled vegetables, tofu, or a small salted dish. Eat it. It is part of the ritual.
Ordering starts with drinks. In most izakayas, staff will come to the table expecting a drinks order before anything else. The default move for most Japanese groups is to start with beer, specifically a cold draft lager, which is sometimes just called nama (raw beer). If you do not drink alcohol, ask for oolong tea or a soft drink. Nobody will make you feel strange about it.
The food menu at a decent izakaya will cover a lot of ground: grilled skewers (yakitori), sashimi, fried chicken (karaage), edamame, grilled corn, cold tofu, potato salad that is better than it sounds, and usually some kind of noodle or rice dish if you need something more substantial. You do not order everything at once. You order a few things, eat them, then order more. If you try to order all at once like you are at a Western restaurant, the staff will be slightly thrown off and you will end up with twelve plates arriving at the same moment.
Yakitori deserves a moment. These are small skewers of grilled chicken, and a proper yakitori izakaya will list every part of the bird separately. Momo is thigh meat, negima is chicken with leek, tsukune is a chicken meatball, and kawa is crispy grilled skin. If you are not sure where to start, momo with tare (a sweet soy glaze) is the reliable choice. Ask for shio (salt) instead if you want something cleaner tasting.
Most izakayas will have a picture menu or a tablet ordering system, which takes a lot of the pressure off. If you get a written Japanese-only menu, point and ask kore wa nan desu ka? which means what is this? Staff at izakayas are generally used to working with people who do not speak Japanese. Patience on both sides goes a long way.
One more thing worth knowing: the end of the meal is usually signalled by ordering rice, noodles, or ochazuke (rice with green tea poured over it). It functions as a closer, the Japanese equivalent of ordering a final round. You do not have to follow this exactly, but if you want to eat the way the table next to you is eating, that is how they do it.
Izakayas vary enormously. A chain like Torikizoku is cheap, cheerful, and good for a first visit because everything is the same price and the picture menus are clear. A small neighbourhood izakaya run by one person with eight seats and no English is a completely different experience, and honestly a better one once you have got the basics down.
