Umami Mart

*Nahoko Morimoto is a Tokyo-based photographer. Her work has been featured in Brutus and Vogue Japan.

I love this time of the year when farmers markets set up during the evenings downtown. There’s nothing better at the end of the day than a stroll through the market, basket in hand, the smell of fresh fruit and herbs in the air. I met Jack after work at the market and we gathered […]

By Sasha Wizansky On October 21st, chef Kanji Nakatani took a small group of the OPENharvest crew on a trip to the Hokutei Fish Market to visit fish purveyor, Katsuhiro Sato. Apparently, Sato was kicked out of the main local fish market many years back and started his own small, maverick fish market, Hokutei Suisan. […]

Look at this tuna head! It was fucking HUGE–I could easily fit my own head into its mouth. Its eyeball was so clear, it looked as though it were still alive, looking deep into my soul, prodding me to try its precious ruby red flesh. Sorry I have not been blogging so much. Every day […]

As I’ve written in a post some years ago, Iceland is a nation of candy addicts. Especially if the candy is chocolate mixed with liquorice. It’s crazy how much candy the Icelandic people eat – but since there’s no fresh ice cream tradition like in Italy or warm, salty pretzels like in Germany – I […]

Yay, there’s finally a real farmer’s market in Copenhagen! After decades of supermarket deathbore, a new race of DIY vendors, small farmers, honey harvesters and local produce hippies will show up in their home-built vans with truckloads of cheap, fresh, delicious and organic fruits of the earth, and deliver the goods our generation has been […]

Last week on Japanify, I proposed the idea of marrying two of my favorite things in life: Japanese food and Twin Peaks. A few hours after my post went up, Kayoko emailed me this post from Mental Floss, on a series of videos from 1993 that came very close to this vision. These videos were […]

My new favorite thing to cook with! Photo by Erin Gleeson.

My parents do their daily and weekly shopping at the vegetable shop just down the road from their house. The thing about South Asian countries is that even though their produce is fresher than fresh, but because of the heat, things go bad very quickly (who wants a bunch of wilted greens?). The main market […]

These photos my friends in Tokyo sent me gave me a glimpse of what is going on there. The images have also reshaped my idea of what to include in my pathetic earthquake kit consisting of some nonperishable food and 4 gallons of water. (Note to self: buy sweet things and dried foods). Most of […]