<DIV>At last, what every Westerner in a Japanese restaurant or market needs: the first truly comprehensive dictionary of Japanese food and ingredients. Standard dictionaries can often mislead us--with akebia for akebi, sea cucumber for namako, plum for ume. Hosking's dictionary includes not only dishes and ingredients, everything from the delicate mitsuba leaf to the dreadful okoze fish: colorful appendices disclose such aspects of Japanese culture as the making of miso to the tea ceremony and the influence of vegetarianism. <br><br>With Japanese-English and English-Japanese sections,<i> A Dictionary of Japanese Food</i> explains the nuances and eliminates the mysteries of Japanese food.</div>