In Japanese, every meal is rice (朝ご飯 昼ご飯 晩ご飯)

Japanese names its meals after the time of day: 朝ご飯 (asagohan), breakfast, is morning rice, 昼ご飯 (hirugohan), lunch, is noon rice, and 晩ご飯 (bangohan), dinner, is evening rice. The word doing the work is ご飯 (gohan), which means cooked rice and also a meal, so every meal in Japanese is, word for word, rice.

What the kanji say

朝 (asa) is morning. Its oldest form seems to show the sun (日) coming up between blades of grass, with the moon (月) still in the sky. The grass is the 十 above and below the sun.

昼 (hiru) is noon, or daytime. It’s a simplified form of an older, busier character, 晝, and nobody is sure what that one first showed. The sun, 日, sits near the bottom of both.

晩 (ban) is evening, or night. The 日 on the left tells you it’s about the time of day, and 免 on the right gives the sound.

飯 (han, or meshi) is cooked rice, or a meal. On its left is 食, to eat, squeezed into a narrow shape, 飠. On its right, 反 gives the sound.

Why rice means a meal

ご飯 is 飯 with ご in front, a polite prefix. In kanji it’s 御飯, but people almost always write the ご in hiragana. Its first meaning is cooked rice, the bowl of plain white rice that comes with a Japanese meal. Its second meaning is the meal itself.

Rice has long been the centre of a Japanese meal. The other dishes are おかず (okazu), side dishes that go with the rice. No wonder the meal took the rice’s name, and it keeps it even when there’s no rice at all: 朝ご飯にパンを食べた, “I had bread for breakfast”, is perfectly normal Japanese. “Every meal is just rice” is a playful way to put it; the real point is that ご飯 means a meal of any kind.

Japanese also has more words for rice than English does. 稲 (ine) is the rice plant, 米 (kome) is the raw grain you buy in a bag, and ご飯 is rice once it’s cooked.

Plain, casual and formal

The same three meals come in three styles.

• ご飯 is the everyday word, fine with anyone: 朝ご飯, 昼ご飯, 晩ご飯.
• 飯 (meshi) is casual and sounds masculine: 朝飯 (asameshi), 昼飯 (hirumeshi), 晩飯 (banmeshi).
• 食 (shoku) makes the formal words you’ll see on hotel signs and menus: 朝食 (choushoku), 昼食 (chuushoku) and 夕食 (yuushoku).

Dinner has one more option. 夕ご飯 (yuugohan) and 夕飯 (yuuhan) use 夕 (yuu), evening, and mean the same as 晩ご飯.

How to use it

• 朝ご飯、食べた？

  Asagohan, tabeta?

  Did you have breakfast?

• 昼ご飯を食べに行きましょう。

  Hirugohan o tabe ni ikimashou.

  Let's go and get lunch.

• 今日の晩ご飯は何？

  Kyou no bangohan wa nani?

  What's for dinner tonight?

• 朝ご飯はいつもパンです。

  Asagohan wa itsumo pan desu.

  I always have bread for breakfast.

• ご飯ですよ！

  Gohan desu yo!

  Food's ready! (calling everyone to the table)

• Context tells you which ご飯 it is. ご飯を炊く (gohan o taku) is to cook rice; ご飯に行く (gohan ni iku) is to go out for a meal.
• At a restaurant, ご飯 is the rice. In a 定食 (teishoku), a set meal, ご飯 is the bowl of rice, and ご飯大盛り (gohan oomori) gets you a large portion.
• 飯 is for friends. 飯、食った？ (Meshi, kutta?) is a casual, rather masculine “Eaten yet?”. With anyone else, stick to ご飯.

Words with the same kanji

Remember it

Three bowls of rice on the table: one as the sun comes up (朝), one at noon (昼), one at sunset (晩). Each bowl is ご飯, and so is each meal.

The kanji in this lesson

Tap Draw it to watch the stroke order. Numbers show where each stroke starts.

Draw it

Draw it

Draw it

Draw it

Sources

• Wiktionary: 御飯 (ご飯)
• Jisho (JMdict): ご飯

Written by the Chirami team with the help of AI, then checked against JMdict and KANJIDIC2. How we write lessons. Spotted a mistake? Email support@brightsmilesolutions.org.