Japanese ingredients decoded and demystified, taken from Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat by Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle.

When I squeeze inside my mother's kitchen, I am struck by how similar it looks to a reduced-version of a typical Western kitchen – a cooker, sink, worktop, cupboards, microwave oven, refrigerator – yet how radically different is much of the food that comes out of it.

The secrets are revealed on closer inspection. Scattered around the place you'll find a few pieces of cookware and a number of basic ingredients and seasonings that you'll rarely find in the West. Once you stock up on these basics, your start-up Tokyo Kitchen will be almost ready for action.

As for the ingredients, you may never have heard of some of them. You may think they have weird-sounding names and a disconcertingly mysterious appearance when you look at the packages. What in the world is ‘kombu'? Will it bite me? When my husband asked his sister Kate if she had ever had mugicha (a delicious cold barley tea), she replied, ‘Is it something you have to take medicine for?'

But unusual as they may look and sound, all these foods and ingredients are in fact both easy to understand and easy to use. Beyond that, they have three other things in common: they are the basic powerhouses of the Japanese home kitchen, providing the foundation for everything that makes Japanese home-style cooking what it is. They are used by tens of millions of Japanese women, in kitchens that are probably half the size, if not less, of yours. And you're likely to find most or all of them compatible with your own tastes if you're willing to experiment a little and give them a try.

You're also likely to find many of them at a shop near you. Many of the major supermarket chains carry the most popular Japanese home-style cooking items, like tofu, miso and soy sauce. Many health food shops stock at least some Japanese ingredients too. If you're lucky enough to live near a Japanese grocery store, or an Asian, Korean, or ‘Oriental' specialist market that carries Japanese grocery products, you'll feel like you've hit the jackpot since you'll be able to pick from a wide range of products. Not only is the variety of products much greater, but the prices are often lower than what you'll find in the average supermarket.

The main thing is not to let yourself be intimidated by how foreign-looking all these products are. Since Japanese grocery stores stock seasonings and ingredients imported from Japan, it means that usually the writing on the packaging is in Japanese. Not to worry. On the back of almost every product is a label in English, listing the product name, ingredients, nutrition facts, manufacturer and importer.

On your first few trips to a Japanese grocer's, take the shopping list with you and ask the staff to direct you to the appropriate parts of the shop. Then start turning over the packages to find the English-language labels on the back.

If you don't live within range of a Japanese grocery store, there's still good news. Remember that you can use the Internet to help you shop for Japanese ingredients. If you go to Google's Froogle, Yahoo Shopping, Amazon's gourmet food section, or websites like www.clearspring.co.uk, you'll find a number of sources for Japanese goodies.

Don't get overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of what you see on the shelves. Keep in mind that just like bread or milk in this country, each of the basic Japanese food ingredients and seasoning products come in many different varieties from many different manufacturers. In fact, you may at first think there are too many. Having such an array of choices can be very confusing.

I understand the feeling. I was once a Japanese girl fresh off the plane and newly transplanted to the bewilderingly vast consumer culture of America ; I felt lost every time I walked into a supermarket. Just to buy milk, I found that I had to choose among whole milk, skimmed, low-fat (1 per cent or 2 per cent), half and half, lactose-free, soya, rice, in different sizes – not to mention having to choose which brand I preferred. This was completely overwhelming to me.

Which reminds me of a man I know named Mel Berger. He is one of the top literary agents in New York . In fact, he is my agent. He is a deal maker. I've seen him in action in business and he comes across as brilliant and fearless. But Mel Berger has a secret fear.

He lives in New Jersey , close to a branch of a fantastic Japanese grocery store – the Mitsuwa Marketplace. Inside its doors is a wonderland of Japanese home-cooking ingredients and equipment, foods, beverages, flavourings, cakes and sweets, fresh vegetables and succulent fruit, some of it fresh off the plane from Tokyo .

Mel likes Japanese food. Yet he has never gone inside. Why?
‘Because,' he confessed quietly to me one day, ‘I'm afraid of it.'
‘Why are you afraid?' I asked.
He replied, ‘I don't know what's in it.'

Naturally, some Japanese ingredients will seem unfamiliar to you. And even once you've worked up the courage to go shopping for them, some may seem a bit foreign to your taste. However, don't give up on the first trial tasting, just because you or a family member did not like the flavour. Try small tastes of many different dishes, until you find the ones you like. And don't decide on the basis of any one tasting that you don't like a whole category of food, because within a given category there are so many different tastes.

Take miso, for example. For the Japanese, miso is like wine, cheese or coffee – something very familiar that comes in dozens of subtle varieties of flavour, aroma, colour and texture. You might love one kind of miso and not another. As you'll read below, some misos are mild and sweet, others salty and pungent; some are smooth and refined, others slightly coarse or pebbly in texture.

You will probably not know what style of miso you prefer. But how did you find out which blend and brand of coffee you like most? Did you stick with the first you tried, or switch among several until you found your current favourite? And what about wine? If you're a wine lover, I'm sure you have your favourites, but you're probably always learning about new wines to enjoy. Apply a similar process to researching your favourites when you shop for your Tokyo Kitchen. Testing and tasting is part of the pleasure of cooking and eating.

Also, try not to prejudge any of the ingredients because you think they sound weird, or you've had them and are convinced you don't like them. That was how I was about cheese when I first came to America . In Japan , when I was growing up, we had basically one kind of cheese. It was a processed, gooey, semi-hard block. Sliced into small rectangular shapes, it was layered onto slices of bread that we toasted, or it was grilled with eggs, put into salads or sandwiches, or eaten plain. This was all I knew of cheese and I wasn't too crazy about it, because no matter how we used it, it never had a taste or texture that I found appealing.

Only in America did I discover the wonderful world of cheese. In Illinois, I was introduced to the famous cheeses of nearby Wisconsin. Now I love to eat wedges of those sharp tangy cheeses with slices of apple. And I've learned about lots of other cheeses since then. I break and sprinkle Roquefort cheese with dried cranberries over salads. I smear goat's cheese from my local farmers' market on thinly sliced baguettes from a great bakery in my neighbourhood. I love to prepare a simple dish of fresh mozzarella with ripe tomato slices sprinkled with olive oil and fresh basil. So, never say never!

This is an extract taken from Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat by Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle. For more details on this book, please click here.