m&m: i am not a knowledgeable expert in japanese cuisine, just an enthusiastic enjoyer (is that a word?) of it. i am not sure if you were asking for info on the cuisine, or for suggestions of places to try japanese cuisines, or just specifically info on shiawase. i have not been to shiawase, so here's a hybrid answer on the cuisine and place i like to go. most recently, i went to YUZU, a restaurant in torrance. the friend with whom i went told me that the place serves traditonal japanese foods, so i was sort of expecting it to be dark inside, that we'd be sitting on the floor, that the servers would all be geishas...LOL! atmosphere is totally not like that at all. it's the food that's traditional - japanese preparation, ingredients, and presentation - sukiyaki, nabeyaki, small plates of raw fish (but not like sushi), etc. no fusion with other cuisines, etc. i especially loved the saba. SHIN SEN GUMI is also in the south bay area, between torrance and gardena. it is a robatayaki, with a heavy, highly energetic focus on drinking. almost everything, from chicken hearts and gizzards to pork belly wrapped asparagus, is skewered and thrown on the robata grill. there is a MUSHA in torrance, as well as in Santa Monica. it's an izakaya (i think robatayaki is a type of izakaya), which basically means a restaurant/bar that serves lots of small dishes (which also includes things on skewers) that are meant to be eaten with lots of drink. the foods are slightly more food-forward, sort of flashy and fun, with things like risotto carved out of a wheel of cheese, yaki-niku (grilling meat on a tiny charcoal grill at your table). some other izakaya places in west la that are in this family are TERRIED SAKE HOUSE (a little dive-y-er), NANBANKAN (totally hidden), and SASAYA (about 6 months old). you can always look for shabu shabu houses, places where you sit at a bar or table and cook meat and vegetables yourself in a pot of simmering water on a hot plate in front of you. in west LA, MIZU 212 is decent, but it's way more expensive than i'm used to, and plus the hot pots are all stationed too far away from the seats so you have to reach across and drip stuff all over the place. there's also SHABU HACHI a little further west. whereas MIZU 212 gives each diner their own hot pot of water, at SHABU HACHI, the table shares one pot in the middle. don't go if someone in the group has the flu (although the steam that comes off the pot would feel great for him or her!) obviously, this is all very westside-centric. there are plenty of places in j-town and in gardena. i'm just afraid of freeway traffic
