Umami Mart

Took a bus tour down to the Izu Peninsula back in November, in the Shizuoka prefecture of Japan, full of small coastal towns, fresh seafood and blissful onsen. We stopped at Joren waterfall, which is known for their fresh wasabi. Supposedly, this wasabi is especially good because of the clean, cold water from the Joren. […]

On the first day of the season forecasted for snow in Tokyo, I knew I wanted something warm and spicy. I thought Korean would suffice, but I couldn’t shake off my hankering for nabe. So I decided to do a search for hinabe on google. Hinabe is a style of nabe (hi meaning fire, and […]

Went to a restaurant in Atami, a sea-side onsen town about an hour out of Tokyo. The himono (air-dried fish) here is really well known in this town, perfectly salted and grilled. Here it is, with requisite grated radish and lemon. Drizzle over some soy sauce to your liking, and you’ve got a very typical […]

Missed this in yesterday’s post, from Tokyo- miso ramen with scallions marinated in spicy-as-hell chilly sauce. So intense.

My goal in Japan was to eat ramen everyday. With everything else that there was to eat, I sadly couldn’t fulfill the goal, but I did have my fair share. Here is my top 3: A place near my aunt’s house in Yokohama, called Tora. Lots of chain ramen joints everywhere now, which was a […]

There’s a little Korea-town in the Akasaka section of Tokyo, just a little side street filled with Korean-owned and operated restaurants. Here, my friend Maho took me to one of her favorite spots, Ton-chan. There are a few Ton-chan’s scattered all around Tokyo- it is bbq, but they specialize in pork (ton, in Japanese means […]

Besides okonimiyaki, Osaka is known for another genius culinary invention: kushikatsu (aka kushiage). It’s so dreamy. Various meat and seafood parts, sometimes utterly inappropriate but so delicious. All kinds of vegetables. All breaded, then fried. On a stick! Yippee!!! We went over to the Jan-Jan strip of the city (above neon sign), where the taxi […]

Donuts are quintessentially American. They are fried gobs of dough drenched in icing and sprinkles. Therefore, it is a mystery why Tokyo-ites, who are otherwise so conscious of calorical intake, line-up for donuts with wait times that put lines at the Apple store the morning of the iPhone release to shame. Although Mister Donut has […]

Here is quite possibly my most memorable meal in Japan. At least it’s one that I often have been contemplating, recalling the presentation and flavors of that mystical meal overlooking Kyoto (ahhhh). Famed Kyoto restaurant Wakuden has been around for something like a century, and recently opened another outlet on the 11th floor of the […]

In Japan, I noticed an unhealthy obsession with cabbage. While cabbage is quite normal with tonkatsu (as Yoko wrote), it’s pretty bizarre to be serving it by itself as a sort of “starter,” don’t you think? Bizarre, but not bad. Kinda addictive actually. Here it is with a curry miso and mayo at an izakaya […]