Okonomiyaki
This dish, also called the Japanese pizza, is a very popular dish. Okonomiyaki restaurants may not be as highly spread accros the globe as pizza restaurants or sushi bars, but they should be. It's a delishious dish, consisting of a wide range of ingredients.
Okonomiyaki is usually made from flour, water, eggs and cabbage. The cabbage is chopped and mixed with the eggs, water and flour. To this is added pretty much anything you want. (the name literally translated is: “whatever you want” fried) Common things to add would be thinly sliced chopped pork, thinly sliced chopped beef, chopped onions, octopus, squid, and mushrooms. The good part of okonomiyaki is also the sauce. Most people eat it with okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise and then scraped fish skin (it tastes better than it sounds).
Tacoyaki
The taco stands for octopus. This dish is a peculiar one. Japan has a lot of tacoyaki stands, which can be compared to hot-dog stands. It just sells tacoyaki. If you have the oddly shaped round forms you can make them yourself. Basically the dish is a number of round omelet balls with pieces of octopus in it. Delicious!
Monjayaki
This dish is a variation of okonomiyaki and can be found mainly in the Kanto region of Japan (In and around Tokyo that is). It is in general some sort of omelet with a lot of cabbage and other ingredients. The difference between okonomiyaki is that monjayaki is less consistent and more liquid. You usually eat it at a restaurant, where they give you the mixture and you can make it yourself. It's worth a try although not easy and be sure to be there in time or be prepared to wait in front of the restaurant if you want to eat around the normal hours.
This picture is me fighting to keep my monjayaki in shape. Believe me, a Japanese person to help you can come in handy.
Sukiyaki
I cheated with this one. It's not really a fried dish, rather a boiled one. Basically you eat vegetables and slices of beef. You dip them in a boiling water mixture until they are done and then you dip them in a raw egg. Yes, that's right the sauce is just a raw egg. The real hardcore Japanese can use two raw eggs for sauce. Needless to say it's very heavy on the stomach. If you go to a place for lunch sometimes you can be served just the beef and some vegetables in dark dip and the raw egg, so that you don't have to cook your things yourself.
Yakisoba
Soba are Japanese buckwheat noodles. Yakisoba is a very straightforward dish. Fried noodles. You can have it with anything, Shrimp, meat, vegetables.
Yakiudon
Udon are thick white Japanese noodles made from flour. You can fry them on a hot plate or like I do at home in a wok pan. They don't need frying a lot (about a minute or so). This means that you can choose how well you want to fry the things you add and add even nearly raw vegetables. I cheated this into the popular list, to be honest it is not so common in Japan. They all know the dish but don't eat it that much.
Yakitori
Tori means bird in Japanese. When we're talking about food it's mostly chicken. I remember seeing pigeons and joking with a friend look: yakitori! Basically this is just fried chicken. Usually it is served on a skewer. It usually comes with very good sauce.
