Japanese, like English, has a lot of different words for food. “Gohan” suggests a complete meal rather than raw food. “Gohan” is also the word for cooked rice. The fact that the word for rice and food in general are the same should tell you a lot about the Japanese diet.
From what I’ve heard almost every complete Japanese meal will either be based around rice or at least include a small bowl of rice as a side dish. This is even true of a lot of breakfast dishes. I think the big exception is noodle dishes; the noodles provide enough carbohydrates without any extra rice.
But I honestly know very little about Japanese cuisine. You’re going to need to find a different blog if you’re interested in international cuisine.
Vocabulary
朝ご飯 = あさごはん = breakfast
朝 = あさ = morning
ご飯 = ご飯 = food
昼ご飯 = ひるごはん = lunch
昼 = ひる = noon
夕ご飯 = ゆうごはん = dinner
夕 = ゆう = evening
Transcript
言語ガールズ #97
Honestly They’re All Pretty Important
Yellow: I overslept today so I didn’t have time for 朝ご飯.
Blue: But at least you’re keeping up with your vocabulary.
Blue: Here’s some trivia: The word 朝ご飯 is made up of the symbols for “morning” and “food”.
Yellow: Hmph. You can’t eat trivia.
Blue: Lunch and dinner follow a similar pattern.
Yellow: Unless you wrote the trivia down on paper and then ate the paper…
Yellow: Important question: which do you think would taste better? My math notes or the rough draft of that essay we wrote in English?