I've recently visited Japan and food was one of my main topics of interest. What I realized is that food is very expensive, especially meat, cheese and vegetables. Bread is weird, too fluffy and soft for my taste. So, as a consequence, they mostly focus on rice and noodles. Very little potato in their cuisine, as well.

I live in Romania. By comparison, Romania has cheaper food, and much of it is tastier, including: meat, and especially smoked pork meat, cheese - you have to taste Romanian cheese from the mountains, it just doesn't compare to the poor examples of cheese I found in Japan. Our breads are 100 times better, you can find anything - long, short, round, crunchy, fluffy, with brown flower, multi flowers, seeds, anything really, except the Japanese originals: "mellon bread", "curry bread" and "anpan".

Bottled water tastes better in Romania, but Japanese tap water is amazing (never seen such good tap water, I drunk from the faucet). Romanian beer is much tastier too - I suppose it's because of better water. Wine - well, Japanese wines from the market are bad, and expensive. In my country I can find wine tasting 10 times better at a quarter of the price. Sake - I tried it but I don't like the taste much. Pickled vegetables - well, I would say we're even on this domain - Japanese have their own, pickled ginger and such, Romania has its own, usually cucumbers, peppers, cabbage, cauliflower and mellon (so tasty, pickled mellon).

So I'd give Japan a good grade overall, the food is tasty but different, mostly rice and noodles, very expensive, and in many domains lacking by comparison to food I know from my country. What I liked the most are - bento boxes, udon, mochi daifuku (very interesting tactile sensation), sushi and tempura.