One of my favourite restaurants was in Fukuoka city, walking distance from our hotel, Nishitetsu Grand. I can't remember the name, but it definitely wasn't your ordinary sushi restaurant. What delighted me was the variety on the menu.

I always love trying out new dishes, new meats... And when I saw horse meat on the menu, I knew I'd give it a go. The horse meat arrived raw, served like sashimi, but with garlic, soy sauce and oil. It was delicious and tender.

In Japanese cuisine, raw horse meat, called sakura (桜) or sakuraniku (桜肉, sakura means cherry blossom, niku means meat) because of its pink colour. It is very chewy. It can be served raw as very chewy sashimi in thin slices dipped in soy sauce, often with ginger and onions added. In this case, it is called basashi (Japanese: 馬刺し). Fat, typically from the neck, is also found as basashi, though it is white, not pink. Horse meat is also sometimes found on menus for yakiniku (a type of barbecue), where it is called baniku (lit., horse meat) or bagushi (lit., skewered horse); thin slices of raw horse meat are sometimes served wrapped in a shiso leaf.
~taken from Wikipedia

Almost ordinary sounding, the beef BBQ we ordered at this restaurant came served with a cute BBQ grill atop a pot akin to an aromatherapy pot. The meat was sweet, marinated in oil, served with lemon and garnished with spring onions (or what's known as eschallots, in Australia). The second time we came to this restaurant, we brought the whole cast, and everyone had a wonderful time with the food and company.

If anyone's been a fan of Japanese anime, you will often notice how the children in the films always carry with them, rice balls, onigiri or omusubi. These are oval or triangle shaped rice usually wrapped in nori (seaweed), and with salmon filling. This is a common snack with the Japanese, and are found in the 7-11 or convenience stores rather ubiquitously.
Slightly salty and sticky in texture, compared to other Asian rice, this tastes almost like sushi without the meat or vegetables. Enveloped in nori, the plastic wrapping on the outer layer was ingeniously made for easy unwrapping. Besides enjoying it plain, I discovered how yummy it was to snack on it with the tiny block of cheese (seen on the left, in the aluminium coloured wrapping).

In Malaysia, we don't usually see many different types of Japanese desserts. It would tend to be maccha zen (green tea ice-cream), or if you're lucky, wasabi aishu (wasabi ice-cream). A lot of other Japanese desserts or sweets (like the mochi) would, in my opinion, seem similar to the Chinese deserts or sweets because they have the same ingredients.
This is oshiruko. It's made of azuki (a *very* sweet red bean soup) with mochi, and usually served with umeboshi (pickled plums) as a much needed palate cleanser. But in this case, I think my oshiruko was served with takuan (yellow pickled radish).

*If I made any mistakes with the Japanese names or references, please feel free to clarify.