Umami Mart

It’s funny how when you mention Japan and food in the same sentence, there only seems to be two options. You can take the fabulous gourmet-cheering, sushi-adoring, heavenly-graced and experimenting Michelin-guided way. Or, you can choose the back alley into the world of eyeball-abusing, crazed up, disgustingly weird nastiness that freak the shit out of […]

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 […]

I went to visit my dad’s grave yesterday and on my way there, we had to transfer trains at an adorable little station, Surugaoyama in Yamanashi Prefecture, at the foot of Mt. Fuji. At the kiosk, I spotted a snack named “Unagi Bone” made by Ichimaru foods. I loved the retro packaging and that there […]

Will it be shoyu? Miso? Tonkotsu? 大もり= Oomori = Super Size Me? Side of fried rice? Gyoza? An extra egg? Extra slices of roast pork? Choose button carefully– there’s no turning back! Drop your yen into the machine and the ticket will print with your order. Take ticket to the dude behind the counter, who […]

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 […]