Umami Mart

When I first moved to Studio City earlier this year, my friend Trevor greeted me with “Welcome to the city of sushi joints and bong shops.” And I thought to myself, “Heaven?”  I kid, kind of.  According to Yelp.com there’s about 63 places to eat sushi in the 7.11 square miles that is Studio City.  […]

The eskimos have many words for snow, just like the Japanese have many words for seaweed. For those of us on the other side of the pacific, the lack of words for seaweed is problematic. It is very confusing when reading the translated English ingredients for nori, iwanori, wakame and kombu since they all say […]

I have a friend (let’s call him Mr. X) who’s both a Japanophile and a shopaholic. Not that this is a bad thing – the combination means that his apartment is a treasure chamber of Japanese collector’s items, beautifully rustic ceramics and a kitchen swollen with all kinds of Tokyo food imports. Mr. X used […]

I mention all the time that there’s a Greenmarket every Wednesday outside of my work. There’s an awesome Korean-owned farm, who always have Japanese cucumbers, eggplants and shishito peppers. This season, shiso is abundant as well. I only buy shiso there since everything else is extremely expensive. On top of it, the next tent sells […]

Summer is here. A very fucking uncomfortably hot summer is here. I am not young enough to go out to the beach and lay out all day any more, which pisses me off. However, staying young-looking requires me to wear a lot of sun screen. What is it to get old? It’s not fun at […]

When the heat rolls in, laziness comes in the form of “I don’t want to cook.” Maybe it’s also an instinctual thing where I am unconsciously preparing for a fire or earthquake which is more likely to happen in the hot summer months by hoarding a bunch of canned booty. Whatever the reason, I am […]

My friend Futoshi came back from Japan and brought some of the newest and weirdest junk food from the motherland. In recent months, the most popular food item in Japan is apparently the edible chill-infused oil or 食べる辣油.  I saw articles about it in newspapers everywhere– Japan’s major condiment brand Momoya, came out with this […]

Quite possibly the only herb in the mint family that the Japanese will not associate with toothpaste is shiso. Shiso, or sometimes referred to as perilla, Japanese basil or beefsteak plant is often found as a garnish in Japanese cuisine. I noticed that Yamahomo and I seem to have somewhat of an obsession with shiso […]

In Japan, people give gifts to each other on many occasions. Don’t you have one or two Japanese friends, who give you gifts whenever they return from Japan despite the fact that you’ve never given them anything? You thought, “This is awkward, do you like me or something?!” right? I have no idea where this […]

The first time my husband found a bag of Capellini at a grocery store in America he said “It’s like sōmen.” Indeed, sōmen is about the same thinness as capellini and takes about the same time to boil – 3 minutes. But unlike capellini, sōmen is always eaten cold in the summer in tsuyu broth […]