Umami Mart

While my husband is away in Tokyo this week, I dig myself deeper everyday into a dark hole of despair and yearning. With emails from him like “I am going to Bar Tender in the day then Sasagin and Saburo in the night,” missing him is eclipsed by missing the food in Tokyo. To torture […]

Raw Chicken at Fuku Fuku in Yoyogi-Uehara was a last-minute discovery I made before my escape from Tokyo. It was a five-minute walk from my apartment and served yakitori in a style much trendier than Tori-ina. Tori-ina brings in the 40s and 50s crowd, whereas, Fuku is patronized by people in their 20s and 30s. […]

I have five more days in Tokyo. I am filling up on soba, genmai cereal and tan-tan men every opportunity I get. My dad always said, “Japan will always be around, America will always be around.” So I am not totally distraught — comforted by the fact that the noodles, sashimi and oolong-hais in Tokyo […]

Update May 10, 2012: This location has since closed.  Shimokitazawa is hands down my favorite part of Tokyo. It’s teeming with youth and the elderly, shopping for knick knacks in a part of Tokyo that has no high-rise buildings — preserving a quaintness that is absent in the major hubs of the city like Shibuya […]

1.) Chopsticks holder-thingy. 2.) Chopsticks to lay on #1. 3.) Cup for soba broth. 4.) Little container of housemade broth, to pour into #3. 5.) Dish of green onions and wasabi. To be added to #3 (only after #4 is poured in). 6.) Pink salt for Exhibit 7. 7.) Maitake tempura. How autumnal! To be […]

I have been going through my hard drive and am finding a shitton of Japan Food pics from my visit last year that I never shared with you. My one-year anniversary of leaving NYC is fast approaching- I left on November 3 and went straight to Japan for nearly the entire month, remember? It’s all […]

I did the Lost in Translation thing for the first time and went to the Park Hyatt’s New York Grill. I suppose that after living in Tokyo for four years, it was about time. And given the fact that I will be leaving Tokyo in three months back to my home state of California, it […]

Din Tai Fung was the site of the first Umamiventure outside the United States. On September 27, for Sunday lunch, six hungry Tokyoites and a visitor piled into the busy Din Tai Fung branch on the 12th floor of Shinjuku’s Takashimaya Square. I arrived there first with Anders and was greeted with a line of […]

It’s so hard not being tempted by the Japanese advertising machine. When this monster from a distant shore shifts up its gears, there is no mercy for your soul – or belly. Paired up with a genuine American product like the donut, a huge chunk of Japanese consumers seem to have caved in and lined […]

Anders (fellow UMAMIMART writer), Rene and I went to Pinafore, a maid cafe in Tokyo, last Sunday. Here’s the report. ANDERS:It’s funny how you as a foreign tourist constantly walk around in Tokyo expecting to be shocked, appalled and freaked out by the weirdness of the Japanese. Maybe it’s the over-hyping guide books, maybe it’s […]