Japanese cuisine is full of many different types of foods. Watch Food Network one day when they’re highlighting Japanese food, or flip on the Travel Channel during Bizarre Foods with Anthony Zimmern and you’ll see that the range of Japanese cuisine spans much farther than in some others. Being a relatively small country, you’d expect foods to all be the same, but whether you’re eating an entire course of turtle (from raw to soup), live baby octopus, or tender kobe steak, what most people think of when they think of Japanese food is sushi.

A typical dinner time Japanese dish, Nikujaga is a meat and potato stew. Delicious on a cool fall evening with a bowl of rice, it is a favorite of many around the world. A little bit sweet and salty, it mixes flavors that normal American stews just don’t have, and is one of the simplest meals to prepare.