I get this message all the time.

“I want to cook Japanese food but there’s no Asian market near me.”

And honestly, I get it. I live in LA so I have options, but I also have a toddler. There are weeks where the only store I go to is the one closest to my house. Which is Walmart.

So instead of writing another substitute list I thought, let me just go. Actually shop, actually cook dinner, and see what happens.

One trip. Five dishes. Nothing from anywhere else.

(Not sponsored. Walmart has no idea who I am. I just live near one.)

What I was trying to make

In Japan we build a meal a certain way and it has a name. Ichiju-sansai. One soup, three dishes.

Rice in the middle. A soup. One main. And two smaller vegetable dishes.

I didn’t know this was a thing until I moved here, by the way. It’s just... dinner. It’s what was on the table every night, and nobody ever explained it to me because why would you explain your own dinner.

But the part I think doesn’t translate: the vegetables are not the side. You don’t pick a meat and then panic about what goes with it. You start from two or three vegetable dishes and the protein sits next to them.

So a normal Japanese dinner ends up with a lot of vegetables in it. Not because anybody decided to be healthy.

Tonight:

• Short grain rice

• Kakitama-jiru (egg drop soup)

• Teriyaki chicken

• Shira-ae (spinach in tofu dressing)

• Cucumber sunomono

What Walmart had

More than I thought, actually.

Soy sauce — Kikkoman, right there. Mirin, which surprised me. Rice vinegar, sesame seeds, short grain rice.

The international aisle is one shelf and half of it is instant ramen. But the things that matter were on it.

Produce, easy. Spinach, mini cucumbers, green onion. Chicken thighs, tofu, eggs, chicken broth.

No miso

Not in the international aisle. Not in the fridge case next to the tofu, which is where it usually hides and where nobody thinks to look. I checked twice.

Just not there. (Maybe some some Walmart has them)

And I want to be straight about what I did next, because I think this is the useful part.

I didn’t fake it. Miso is fermented soybeans, it takes months. There is nothing on a shelf that becomes miso. Every “miso substitute” I’ve seen is somebody trying really hard to be helpful about something you can’t be helpful about.

So, no miso soup.

But Japanese soup is not always

miso soup. Clear soups are just as normal at home. So I made kakitama-jiru, which is a clear egg drop soup, and which I make about as often as miso soup anyway.

I used chicken broth for the base. That is not dashi. Dashi is kombu and dried fish and it tastes like the ocean. Chicken broth tastes nothing like that. But it does the same job — it gives you something savory underneath so the soup isn’t salty water.

About the teriyaki

There’s a whole aisle of bottled teriyaki sauce and I want to say first — that stuff is good. I buy it. It’s delicious, I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.

But the thing that surprised me, the first time I made it at home, is that it’s three things.

Soy sauce, mirin, sugar. One to one to one.

Same amount of each. That’s the whole sauce. It takes about eleven seconds to mix and it comes out so good that the first time I was kind of shocked. Like, that’s it?

And you get to decide how sweet it is. That part I really like. Some nights I want it sweeter, some nights not so much, and when the sugar is coming out of my own spoon I just know where it is.

If you want easy, buy the bottle. That’s a completely fine dinner.

Also — “teriyaki” is not a flavor. Teri means shine, yaki means grilled. The word is describing what happens to the surface of the meat when the sauce reduces in the pan. So “teriyaki flavor” is a little bit like saying “grilled flavor.”

The substitution list

This is the actual answer to “there’s no Asian market near me.”

Don’t substitute these two:

• Short grain rice — long grain doesn’t stick. It becomes a different dinner.

• Soy sauce — it’s underneath almost everything. Get the real one.

Everything else, go ahead:

• Mirin — 1 tbsp water + 1 tsp sugar, per tablespoon

• Sake — dry white wine, dry sherry, or just water

• Rice vinegar — apple cider vinegar, 1:1

• White vinegar, if that’s all you have — 3 parts vinegar + 1 part water

• Dashi granules — instant miso packet, or chicken broth

• Fresh ginger — tube ginger, 1:1. Powdered is a different ingredient, not a swap

• Potato starch — cornstarch, 1:1

• Suribachi — Ziploc bag and the bottom of a glass

At the table

I sat down and two of the five dishes were vegetables.

The sunomono is cold and sharp, so it kind of resets your mouth between bites of teriyaki. The shira-ae is quiet, it doesn’t fight with anything. The soup is there so the rice isn’t dry.

Nothing on that table is decoration. Everything is doing something.

One thing I noticed while I was eating: the shira-ae came out chunky. It’s supposed to be smooth, almost creamy, and you get that by grinding the tofu in a suribachi. I mashed it with a spatula in like thirty seconds because that’s what happens in my house at 6pm. It tasted right. It just didn’t look like my grandma’s.

Anyway. The store didn’t have miso, so I cooked the other thing. That’s not really a compromise, that’s just how everyone cooks. My grandma did it, my mom does it.

If you make any of these, tell me how it went.

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The Recipes

I lived with a Japanese roommate in Los Angeles for four years. One day I told her, “You know, I really love Japanese food.” She just looked at me and said, “…Saori. You literally eat Japanese food every single day. And honestly? It’s mostly Japanese breakfast. You eat breakfast food at night too.”

She was right. I can’t argue. I love Japanese breakfast that much.

I grew up in Kofu, in Yamanashi — a quiet place surrounded by mountains, about two hours west of Tokyo. My mom worked, so it was my grandma who cooked for me. She was born in Yamanashi, raised in Yamanashi, and she’s still there today. She’s 96. And she still makes miso soup every single morning.

So this breakfast isn’t a recipe I found somewhere. It’s the one I grew up inside of. Let me walk you through it — the way we actually eat it at home.

1. White Rice — yes, just rice

Here’s something that surprised me recently. My husband is Mexican, and his mom cooks for us a lot. When she makes rice — the long, jasmine kind — she puts salt in it. I was genuinely shocked. Salt? In the rice?

Because in Japan, we don’t. We just rinse the rice and cook it. That’s it. No salt, no oil, nothing. Every single house in Japan has a rice cooker, and every single day, plain white rice gets made in it. It’s the most ordinary thing in the world.

And it’s so good. I know “just rice” doesn’t sound exciting. But warm, plain white rice is the quiet center of the whole meal. Everything else leans on it.

• Rinse your short-grain rice until the water runs mostly clear.

• Cook it in a rice cooker (no salt, no oil).

• That’s the whole thing. Really.

2. Miso Soup — every morning, no exceptions

Miso soup happens every morning in my house. No exceptions. Dinner too, usually. The classic version — the one you’ve probably seen at Japanese restaurants in the US — is tofu and wakame seaweed. That’s the one.

But here’s the thing I really want you to hear: the dashi matters more than anything else.

Dashi is the broth — the base of the whole soup. There are basically three ways to get it:

• From scratch — simmering katsuo (bonito) and kombu (kelp). The traditional way.

• A dashi packet — a little bag with all the dashi ingredients inside. You drop it in, and you’re done.

• Instant granules — the powder kind.

I use the packet. Completely. And I think packets are the mainstream now, honestly. Here’s why I actually prefer it, and this surprises people: scratch dashi is beautiful, but it’s delicate — and for miso soup, that delicate flavor gets buried under the miso. The packet just tastes better in this soup. It holds up.

Here’s how I make it:

• Put water in a pot and add your dashi packet — start it from cold water.

• Once it comes to a simmer, take the packet out.

• Add about 1 tbsp dried wakame (dried is easiest — I always use dried), and cut your tofu into small cubes and add it. I like soft tofu. A lot of people here reach for firm, but I go soft — my little daughter loves it, she drinks this tofu miso soup every day.

• When it comes back up to a simmer, turn off the heat — then stir in about 1 tbsp miso. Always add the miso off the heat.

• I always finish with chopped green onion on top. That little smell of green onion — it’s so good.

3. Grilled Salmon — the shortcut I actually use

Japanese grilled fish isn’t just plain salmon. It’s salted — the flavor is already in the fish. You can make it yourself, marinating it overnight. But I’ll be honest: I always buy the frozen kind.

I buy the Japanese salt-cured salmon, frozen, and I keep a huge stash in my freezer. Living in LA you can’t always grab it easily, so when I’m at a Japanese grocery store — Tokyo Central, Mitsuwa, places like that — I buy in bulk. Then I just thaw a piece and cook it in the morning.

In Japan most homes have a little fish grill built into the stove, so people use that. I just use a regular frying pan. And here’s something I discovered recently: instead of cooking it in oil, steaming it a little makes it so much fluffier. I put a little oil in the pan, but I add a splash of water at the same time and let it steam-cook. It comes out fluffy and really good.

4. Nattō — the one that scares people (it’s okay)

Nattō — fermented soybeans. This is the one that makes some people nervous, and that’s completely fine. It’s sticky, it’s got a strong smell. I get it.

But I always have it. Always. My freezer has at least ten packs at any given time — I make sure I never run out, because I eat it every single morning. Each package comes with soy sauce and mustard. I use both, plus extra mustard because I love it. Mix it all up properly. And then — this part matters — chopped green onion. Seriously, the green onion is key.

When I can get good, safe-to-eat raw egg, I mix that in too. Then I spoon it over a little rice and eat it that way.

5. Nukazuke — Grandma’s pickles

Nukazuke are pickles made in a rice-bran bed. Sometimes I make my own. The thing about the bran bed is — it’s alive. You have to stir it every single day, or it’s in trouble. My grandma has kept the same bran bed going in her house for decades. Every day, she’d pickle cucumbers in it.

It’s a fermented food, so it’s wonderful for your gut. I want to get back into making my own when I have time. But you can absolutely just buy it — any Japanese supermarket has it. Buying is totally fine.

6. Green Tea — always

Green tea, always. With breakfast it’s green tea, no question. (These days I’m cutting back on caffeine, so by afternoon I switch to mugicha — barley tea. But mornings are for green tea.)

In the house I grew up in, we drank green tea all day — morning, noon, night, right up until bed. My grandma was basically raised on green tea. Still is.

That’s it. That’s the breakfast. Salty, warm, a little plain — and if you grow up eating it, your body just doesn’t feel right without it. You don’t have to make all of it at once. Start with rice and miso soup. The rest, you can buy, thaw, or add whenever you feel like it.

This is the food I grew up on, the way we really eat it. I’m so happy to finally share it with you.

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