When the talk turns to Japanese food, you’ll often hear somebody say, “Oh, I love Japanese – I’m a big sushi fan!” Or sometimes it’s, “Mmmm, Japanese food – those noodles are my favorite!” And occasionally you’ll hear someone wax enthusiastic about the pleasures of Japanese Kobe beef. Here’s what you don’t often hear: “Y’know, what I really love about Japanese food is the chicken.”

In some respects, this is understandable. Like beef and pork, poultry didn’t enter the Japanese diet until the 1850s, when the country tentatively emerged from its long held isolationism, started industrializing, and slowly began adopting certain Western culinary ideas. Ironically, this was something of a full-circle homecoming for the domesticated chicken, which is thought to have evolved from the red jungle fowl, a tropical pheasant first raised in Asia more than 5,000 years ago.

In any case, there’s now a wide range of chicken treatments in Japan, often served in restaurants that specialize in chicken and little else. And although I’ve never been to Japan myself, my friends who have tell me that some of those restaurants are very similar to New York’s Tebaya (144 West 19th St., 212-924-3335), a tiny storefront operation that opened last month in Chelsea.

Tebaya essentially is fast food: The shop specializes in chicken wings, although the fare here bears little resemblance to Buffalo-style wings or to anything sold at KFC. The wings, available in orders as small as eight pieces ($4.75) or as large as 20 ($13), are deep-fried, seasoned with soy sauce and pepper, and flecked with sesame seeds. The resulting finger food, which has become particularly popular in the Japanese city of Nagoya, has all the juiciness and textural appeal of Buffalo wings, but without the cayenne kick.

Interestingly, the little drumstick like half of the wing isn’t served here – each piece is from the wing’s other half (the “flat,” as it’s known in the poultry trade). This means all the wing pieces are roughly the same size and shape, which makes them easy to serve in a neat, fastidious stack – no small matter to the Japanese, who place great value on their food’s meticulous preparation and presentation.

So when a waitress brought a 20-piece order to the counter area where my friend David and I were waiting (Tebaya has only one small table), we were delighted to find the wings stacked like tiny, golden-brown pieces of cordwood. “They look like cicadas,” David said, meaning this as a compliment.

More importantly, they tasted great, with the sesame seeds adding crucial bits of texture and aroma, and a soy-based dipping sauce on hand for added flavor. For better or worse, the relative lack of spiciness means you can eat way past your usual Buffalo wing limit, because your mouth doesn’t turn into an inferno.

Tebaya also serves excellent fried chicken kebabs with an almost impossibly light, flaky coating ($1.50 apiece), along with more unremarkable offerings like a chicken burger ($4.75) and a chicken sandwich ($5.25). Whatever you order, be sure to get a side of potemochi (three for $1.50). They’re described as “fried potato cake,” but they’re nothing like french fries or any other fried potato dish you’ve ever had. Although crisp on the outside, they’re extremely dense on the inside, like dumplings. They might be too heavy for some, but I found them irresistible, and they go perfectly with the wings.

Japanese chicken is available in a more upscale setting at Yakitori Totto (251 W. 55th St., 212-245-4555), which has been open for a little more than a year. Yakitori means “grilled chicken,” and the focus here is on small charcoal-grilled skewers of very specific chicken parts – so specific that the menu differentiates between skewers of “soft bone” ($3) and “soft knee bone” ($3).

I don’t recommend either of those options, although the restaurant’s two best skewers sound similarly improbable: chicken skin ($2.50) and chicken tail ($2.50). Both are a positively addictive amalgam of crispy, greasy, and salty – you’ll want several skewers of each, trust me. Word to the wise: Because there are several tails per skewer but only one tail per chicken, the restaurant often runs out of tail skewers fairly early in the evening. Make your plans accordingly.

Other excellent skewers include chicken thigh – available on its own ($2) or with the Japanese scallion known as naganegi ($2.50) – and a gorgeous kebab of small green peppers stuffed with ground chicken ($3). Don’t bother with the white meat offerings, which are comparatively bland.

The best starch accompaniment is yaki onigiri ($3), a superb grilled rice ball, topped either with soy sauce or miso. A skewer of grilled garlic ($2) is another good bet – the cloves are tender enough to eat whole, skin and all. Or you can forego the skewers and order a bowl of negitoridon ($10), which features hunks of grilled chicken, scallions, and rice, all topped by a raw egg. When you break the yoke and mix it all together, the result is much like bibimbap, the Korean hotpot dish.

Yakitori Totto is brimming with endearing design details: The place setting has the chopsticks perched on an adorable little wooden pedestal; salt and pepper are dispensed with little hoe-like implements that look like miniature field-hockey sticks; beer is served in ceramic mugs that feel just right in the hand; a display on the wall features austerely lit eggs that look surprisingly beautiful; and the kebabs themselves are presented in small, gorgeously arranged portions.

The net effect is an agreeable feeling of aesthetic craftsmanship. Any chicken would be proud to end up on a plate here.