Yaki-niku

Yaki-niku means 'grilled meat', usually grilled on a hot plate, derived from the Japanese verb yaku 'to grill/roast/fry' and niku 'meat'. (Although niku is originally from Chinese, the word has been almost completely naturalised).

Yaki-niku is written or in Chinese characters, as in the following examples. The insertion or omission of the is optional, providing yet another opening for orthographic variation.

Sumi-bi-yaki no jūshii na yaki-niku Charcoal-grilled juicy grilled meat

Sumi-bi yaki-niku & shiifūdo setto Charcoal grilled meat and seafood set

Of course, it is also possible to write the verb in hiragana: . And on some occasions the entire word can be written in katakana as , as in the following sign. In this case, the use of katakana harmonises with the rest of the sign, which can't be seen in this photo, in which most of the dishes are written in katakana.

Yaki-niku donburi Grilled meat on rice

A Google search in September 2003 found the following distribution for yaki-niku on the Internet. By way of comparison, the results for the similar form yaki-tori are also shown:

Form	No. of occurrences	Form	No. of occurrences
	576,000		68,500
	533,000		502,000
	10,900		46,500
	2,930		7,640
	2,820		2,430
	378		4,660

What is interesting is that is far more common than , whereas and are virtually neck and neck. (See also yaki-tori and yaki-soba).